Songs of Expedience
by Impractical Beekeeping
Summary: A post-Reichenbach tale examining what it is to be Dead and Not Dead, or Alone and Not Alone. Told from multiple character perspectives, which begin in isolation, but then converge to form a unified narrative. It's a bit dark, a bit messy, and more than a little bit mad. Ultimately, this is six stories consolidated to make the series more accessible.
1. Things To Do When You Are Dead

**_Note:_**

_I'll leave the individual works up for now, but soon I'll start pulling them down. No sense in cluttering up my corner of the internet, after all..._

_This version contains the following:_  
_Things To Do When You are Dead_  
_Fearful Symmetry_  
_Things to Do When You're Alone_  
_Silently, Invisibly_  
_A Thing Without a Name_

_It will eventually include "Things That Do Not Die" (just scrawled notes and strange dreams at the moment). By then, I expect Moffatt and Gatiss to have throughly stomped upon all of my fondest imaginings and replaced them with something new and brilliant._

_This collection does not currently include the author notes that accompanied the stories in their original format. I'll try to put the most important ones (with word translations, for example!) back in soon._

* * *

**Things to Do When You Are Dead**

* * *

**1: Fresh: Autolysis**

We are on the rooftop, and he is dead.

I confess, I hadn't expected him to fire into his own mouth, although somehow I was reasonably certain he wasn't going to shoot me. It occurs to me now that I should have been more concerned about that possibility, but there seemed little point at the time. If I have miscalculated the next step in these proceedings, there's a good chance I'll die anyway. You won't be dead, though. That's the important thing.

His heart has stopped beating and his capillaries are draining. His body heat is dissipating along an exponential decay curve: two degrees within the first hour, to be followed by an additional degree every hour until ambient temperature has been achieved. Within three hours, the muscle fibres will contract and not release, chemical signals lost with oxygen depletion. The blood no longer pumped through his body pools and will eventually cause lividity. Chemical reactions cease, enzymes are released, and autolysis begins. This cellular collapse is subtle, virtually invisible, in contrast to the starkly spreading pool of blood beneath his head.

_Pallor mortis_

_Algor mortis_

_Rigor mortis_

_Livor mortis_

Putrefaction

Decomposition

This is the stillest he has ever been, I think. The gunshot still rings in my head. It is going to make it so much harder to hear your voice when I call you, but I can't allow myself the luxury of listening to your words much, anyway. It is only important that you hear what I have to say to you. I need you to set things in motion. You are the only one who can help me. I need you to help me destroy myself because it's the only way I can think of to save you.

You have to understand, and I hope eventually you will: this is quite possibly the worst thing I've ever had to do, in a lifetime positively littered with things Not Good. There is no alternative, though. I've thought this through a million times, and the equation always resolves the same way: either I die, or you do.

I have to take myself apart now. My reputation. My identity. My heart. To some extent, my complete annihilation will come as a relief. Most of the work has been done for me already. I just need to add the final crimson seal on it all.

Self-destruction is something I excel at. I've been consistently autophagic since birth. I burn from the inside, and the best I can ever hope to do is keep the flames contained. I was beginning to think I had finally learned to slow down that infernal metabolism, but in retrospect, I was wrong. Imagined strength has made me weak. There were too many factors I failed to account for this time. Other people, for example: him, you, them. To destroy myself is nothing much, but I have to start considering the blast radius.

It's true: caring is not an advantage. It is catalysis. It is impossible to stop once you've begun. Increasingly complex reactions and obligations unfold and terrible mistakes are made. It is clearly better to feign ignorance in the name of expediency, and yet I find I positively hate the look on your face when you come up against the manifestation of me that doesn't seem to know how to care. I do, you know. I am incapable of feeling in moderation, so I try to avoid the entire business of emotion altogether. I do this with varying degrees of success. Enough to make a convincing sociopath, I suppose, although you never did buy that story. If either of you had, I suppose none of this would be happening now, would it?

When I flippantly mentioned I'd be lost without you, I genuinely meant it. This is me, becoming lost already. I desperately need to tell you my plans, and of course I can't, although I will try to leave you with some oblique suggestions of the truth. I know you can figure this out. Focus, John.

Right now I am acutely aware that I have come to rely upon you to see the little things I get wrong. There's always something, and simply talking to myself never did help me find the flaws in my logic, the holes in my knowledge. Molly assures me this is going to work, and I am reasonably certain she's right. It would be much better if I could talk it through with you first, though. That's one of the many things I'll need to learn to live without: talking to you. How are there so many important things to lose? It defies reason.

Now I am going to tell you lies, you will listen, and I will fall.

I cannot begin to express how sorry I am that it has come to this.

I'm not allowed to.

* * *

**2: Bloat: Expansion**

I've done it.

Some people do their best thinking when they've got a gun to the head. Once again, it seems I do mine when there's a gun held to yours.

I had so little time to make my preparations. Molly's assistance was crucial to my success. I imagine you're thinking she procured me a corpse to fling over the hospital roof. I considered flinging Moriarty, of course, but we were being watched by at least one of his snipers. It wouldn't have been convincing. I couldn't risk it.

It is a seventy foot drop from the rooftop of St. Bart's. At my mass, a fall to an unyielding surface such as the pavement would, statistically, result in spinal or pelvic injury, ruptured organs, or outright death. Further research indicated three interesting facts: One, that a fall could be made less dangerous by adopting a specific posture. Two, that shaving off a bit of the distance would reduce the force of impact enough to improve my odds of survival. Three, that arranging to land on a softer surface would increase those odds further still.

The rest is trigonometry.

I jumped; you saw me do it. What you did not see, stood as you were with a partially obstructed view of St. Bart's, was that I landed not on the pavement, but rather inside a conveniently parked bin truck full of bags. As I later discovered, I broke my left clavicle upon landing. It's fine. I'm not dead.

As I was falling, I remembered childhood dreams of flying. Asleep, my unconscious mind was convinced that flying was a simple thing, like floating in a pool. If I could only position my body just so in space, I could defy gravity. It seemed so plausible, but of course, it was rubbish. I confess, at various times in my life, I've been haunted by the memory of that feeling. This is the closest I have ever been to that.

It's true that falling and flying are, very briefly, the same thing. It's all in how you end it.

You might wonder why there was a trained medical team conveniently standing by with all their gear. Not to knock the medical establishment, John, but no one reacts that quickly, that_thoroughly,_ to an unexpected suicide. You're familiar with emergency response scenarios, so I'm rather hoping this will be one of many such coincidences to stand out in your memory. I suppose it might take a while to percolate.

After the fall, I was assisted by two members of my homeless network, who doused me in warm blood. While human, the blood was not mine. In fact, it wasn't even my type. Hospitals are remarkably reluctant to relinquish blood that could be better used to save a life. No, this was some O positive I'd wheedled out of Molly weeks back for an antibody experiment. You might even remember having seen the bags in our refrigerator, but perhaps that little detail escaped you, blood being comparatively innocuous.

I was also, and this was a bit risky, given a jab of methohexital, so I'm afraid I missed some of the proceedings. Contrary to the claims of sensationalist literature, it simply wasn't possible to drug myself into catalepsy. Tetrodotoxin, supplied by the pufferfish, can induce a reasonably realistic simulation, but symptoms take at least thirty minutes to appear, and the dosage is a bit tricky. Methohexital (as you know from surgical experience) acts quickly and is relatively safe. What it cannot do is stop a man's pulse.

It also prevented me from seeing you rushing towards me, only to be knocked down by a carefully-placed cyclist. In your disorientated state, it was a reasonably simple matter for me to feign death and for you to be intercepted before you could touch me long enough to realise the truth.

I've been told you suffered no lasting physical harm. I still regret the necessity.

Later, we did employ a corpse, but it was (obviously) neither mine nor that of some hapless stranger supplied by Molly.

I am reliably informed that there is an inexpensive coffin resting beneath that tasteless headstone with my name on it. Perhaps someone will enjoy the humour implicit in burying the corpse of a consulting criminal in a plot marked with the name of the consulting detective he hounded into a false suicide.

Inevitably, Richard Brook will be proven to have been a fabrication. When my people came to spirit away his body and scrub at the bloodstains, they also picked up my phone. I had recorded our conversation, of course. Molly arranged for it to be delivered to my brother after a decent interval. I would have preferred to have it go to Lestrade, but considering the scrutiny his department has been subjecting him to, it seemed imprudent.

Mycroft has already discovered the small anomalies we planted in Molly's falsified autopsy report as a warning system. While it would have been more dramatic for him to storm in, demand to see my body, and then be presented with Moriarty's corpse, it wouldn't have been expedient. Suffice it to say, he knows I'm alive, although at present, he does not know precisely where I am.

I suppose I'll have to see him at some point. I'm quite sure he'll have some well-chosen words on the subject of my suicide. I will have some words with him in return. He has to help me now. I imagine that that will be maddening, although we will both agree that Moriarty's criminal web must be brought down.

John, I've thought about it, and I am no longer entirely comfortable with Moriarty's role in this. Not in a physical sense, you understand. As you might have noticed, I'm not terribly bothered about corpses unless they're doing something interesting.

Right about now, he should be well into the bloat stage, albeit a bit delayed due to the cold weather we've had. The anaerobic microbes have been feeding away, and the hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, and methane gases they produce as waste will be causing his body cavities to expand, and his skin to turn a bit green. Any moment now, the pressure may cause his body to rupture. Meanwhile, his tissues will be liquefying. He is, quite probably, frothing at the mouth a bit.

He will, if anything, smell worse than he looks.

Incidentally, I really must apologise for the time I spilled that putrescine in the flat. It was kind of you to think of sending Mrs. Hudson on holiday. I wish we had gone as well. There's an old murder site I've been dying to visit in Cornwall. It might have made up for the Baskerville case.

Dying is harder than I thought it would be.

I talk and I talk, and it's only now I see that I've made a terrible miscalculation regarding my own tolerances. Moriarty's welcome to that melodramatic headstone and the odd bunch of flowers. That's not the bit that bothers me.

What does bother me is the thought of you coming to visit me, and my not being there. I can't bear my friend talking to the mouldering body of someone who isn't me. It isn't right, and I wish Molly and I had never thought to do it.

I've seen you talking to him, you see. Of course you don't know what you're doing; how could you?

I can't stand to see a dead man take the last thing that should be mine.

I'm sorry, John.

* * *

**3: Active Decay: Decomposition Island**

Being dead is excruciatingly boring.

I haven't gone out since the day I saw you. I shouldn't have done it then, but I couldn't stop myself. Now my brother likes to remind me that I can't afford the danger of being seen.

When I met with Mycroft, I reminded him he contributed to my death, and suggested he make up for it by helping me dismantle Moriarty's operation and paying my half of the rent on 221B. He didn't argue. It was almost disappointing.

Having the resources of the British government at my disposal is coming in useful.

I've had a doctor to set my collarbone. They've been careful to avoid giving me anything stronger than paracetamol because my brother likes to play nanny, of course. I have access to a comprehensive database of Moriarty's business associates, the loan of a decent computer, and a new phone. Later, I'll be given convincing identification documents under a new name. Apparently I don't get to choose my alias. Knowing Mycroft, it will be subtly hateful or somehow absurd.

I look like someone else. My hair is much lighter and short enough to be straight. I have tea coloured eyes that I need to remember to remove before I sleep. I have my left arm in a tedious sling and an incredibly dull wardrobe to go with it. I don't mind that everything buttons or zips. I do mind that it's all shapeless and shabby and colourless.

I've taken up smoking again. It's funny how lighting a cigarette has become a tiny ritual of self-loathing. You would not approve of this, and that is also part of the allure. Thinking of you being angry with me in this small and predictable way brings me a strange sort of peace.

Imagining this is far better than what I saw in your face the day you went to visit my grave.

I don't know whether you've been back. I haven't asked, although I'm sure my brother could tell me. I won't give him the satisfaction.

Molly makes me endless cups of tea that are not as good as yours and jumps whenever I say her name. She is far better than I deserve. I should tell her that; I believe it's the sort of thing people like to hear.

I really must absolve her of any further involvement in this before she slips. It helps that she never talks to anyone much, but it's only a matter of time before a chance meeting and an awkward conversation try her acting skills. It could be you, or Lestrade, or Mike Stamford. I can't let that happen.

It's so boring here. I've been playing with the cat, and it's no substitute for a microscope, or a violin, or a gun. It likes to sleep on my coat, and sometimes, my feet. It sheds a great deal.

It's no substitute, but it seems to like me—God knows why. I think having it around makes me need to sleep more. It appears to enjoy stealing my warmth. No one knows exactly how they purr, did you know that? It's probably produced by rapidly passing air over the vocal folds, but there is no anatomical feature peculiar to the cat that seems to be responsible for the ability. Apparently the sound frequency they emit (between 25 and 150 Hertz) has been theorised to promote bone healing and density. If my fracture becomes suspiciously improved, I'll thank Toby. He is certainly trying hard enough.

I think my legs are atrophying due to the length of time I've spent on Molly's sofa. I think I need another cigarette. I think I need someone to text besides my brother and Molly. I think I need a murder. I think I need to leave the country.

I am being stripped down to something that, while physiologically still me, is not a me you would recognise. I am merely an outline of someone I used to be.

Given enough time, every man becomes an island. A cadaver decomposition island, for example. That's the outline a decomposing body leaves behind in the soil as various liquids are leached away. For a time, it's a place where nothing will grow, a brown and barren patch in an otherwise green and fertile space.

The man in the casket that should have been mine should be liquefying now. I don't have enough data regarding the soil composition of the grave or the coffin materials to know quite how far he has gone. Despite a sealed environment with limited access to insects, various bacteria and fungi should be making a proper soup of him. The feeding of _Phoridae,_ or casket fly maggots, will be accounting for a considerable loss of body mass.

Moriarty's three hired guns (one for you, one for Lestrade, and one for Mrs. Hudson) have all dispersed. Two of them were apprehended leaving the country. They knew very little about their employer, alas—they were mere mercenaries. One remains at large. He interests me for two reasons: first, he appears to have held a significant position in Moriarty's organisation. It is possible he has fallen heir to what remains.

Second, he appears to have been stalking a certain John Watson for quite some time. I believe he was the man Moriarty sent to shoot you the day I died. For all I know, he is also the man who strapped you into the Semtex vest before we met Moriarty at the pool. I'd ask you about him, but of course, I can't.

He's ex-military, although I doubt he ever moved in your circles. He did serve some time in Afghanistan. He was a colonel in the 1st Bangalore Pioneers. He specialised in explosives, which would certainly explain Moriarty's interest. He was dishonourably discharged, but his record seems to have been expunged, enough so that my brother came up blank when he tried to access it. He is supposed to be an unusually good shot. His name is Sebastian Moran, and at the moment, he has managed to fall entirely off the radar.

* * *

**4: Advanced Decay (scavengers depart)**

Sebastian Moran is, in many ways, unexpected. Military photographs and school records only told me so much: Eton and Oxford, and nothing terribly remarkable beyond that. His marks were good, but not spectacular. His academic focus wavered between literature and history. His father was a government minister with family money, a short fuse, and an embarrassing predilection for gambling. His mother was a British-born Iranian who died in a collision with another motorist when he was twelve.

The most useful item came from the Woman. She's dead, of course, but much as I am: nominally. She owes me a substantial favour for that one.

She no longer invites me to dinner. It is both a relief and a disappointment. She has lost her nerve.

_Tell me what Sebastian Moran likes,_ I said.

She sent me a high-resolution photograph, and that told me more than all of Mycroft's information put together.

What I knew already: He is 5 foot ten inches. His frame is nothing extraordinary; his musculature would suit a runner. His hair is medium brown, straight, sunstreaked, and rather shaggy about the ears. His skin is a light golden brown, and his eyes are hazel. He has a pale crescent of scar tissue about the left eyebrow, which indicates both that he is left handed and that his skill with a rifle was hard-won. His features are regular, although there are indications that his nose has been broken, and the creases around his eyes have far more to do with his time in the desert than his age (45 in January).

Irene's photograph shows a man in worn blue jeans with faded knees. He is wearing an inexpensive slate blue flannel shirt with a torn left cuff. It has been repaired with tidy hand stitches. He is wearing black boots with vibram soles, clearly military surplus and not the ones he was issued. They are dusty and worn. The wear patterns in the leather indicate he regularly hooks his right foot around chair legs and bar stools, and at the moment, he has it flexed against the metal frame of a glass observation window at the London Zoo.

His thumbs are thrust into his hip pockets in a gesture that should be nonchalant. Closer inspection, however, shows slight hyperextension of the middle phalanges, which suggests he is applying significant force to the sides of his thighs with his finger tips.

His lips are parted and the right side of his mouth is quirked up slightly. The tip of his tongue is touching his right upper canine. His eyes are wide.

He is looking at an adult male Sumatran tiger, and he might as well be looking in a mirror.

_Where did you get this,_ I asked. _When did you get this?_

_Jim Moriarty,_ she typed. _A few months ago. He said, "Wish you were here."_

He wanted to let her know how easy it would be to have her killed.

I've been tracking down his old associates for weeks, but this... This is interesting. Sebastian Moran cannot be found. If he's running anything, I don't see it.

If this were the sort of novel you like to read and I were a hero of any kind, I'd be crossing the globe in search of Moriarty's lesser criminals. I'd be finding some sort of deeper meaning in the mountains of Tibet and herding sheep in New Zealand, no doubt. All highly impractical, really. As it happens, I have found some useful information in Tibet, but only through the help of a Norwegian naturalist called Sigerson who has convenient friends and a surprisingly good blog. He is to lichen what I am to tobacco ash. You wouldn't like him. He's a bit abrupt.

I've been to France, and I've been to Ireland. I've been to Wales (and spent the entire time missing my coat. It was cold.). But I've accomplished ever so much more here in a squalid flat with a computer and an untraceable number.

My brother helps. We are civil. I hate it more.

I very nearly miss Molly's cat, but it was for the best.

I have my own network now, and it's working rather well. So well, that I asked myself, "What if Moriarty wasn't dead?"

Of course he is. But how many people know that to be true? It occurred to me that at some point, it might come in useful to become him. So to some extent, I have.

I've been very restrained, and that has netted us some of the stupid ones. Some gunrunners. Some confidence men. Some drug lords (ladies, in fact, and that was interesting).

I've got his phone. I haven't wasted my chances on the passcode yet. One thing is curious: we scanned it and it's... just a phone. It rings sometimes, and when it does, I take down the numbers. Some of them have proven useful. Others have not.

Things are falling apart now. If you've seen the news, you know that crime cartels are crumbling everywhere. When the host dies, the parasites run mad until there is nothing left to consume. Some of them even turn on each other.

The maggots have gone from his body. The criminals that required care and feeding have left as well.

Some of them, though... they're waiting for something. What, I can't say until I get into this damned thing. It's bound to be something simple, or mad, or both.

I need to randomise. I know you wouldn't approve of my methods. Nothing is working.

I have to think. No. I have to _stop_ thinking.

It is better that I don't think of you at all.

Sometimes I forget you. It's the work. Until it is done, you can't exist.

You don't.

It's fine.

I don't.

* * *

**5: Dry (Remains)**

I've done it, and it was far worse than I expected.

Not the process, as such. I frittered away weeks before I broke down and decided the best way to go about it was to get as high as a kite.

I became frivolous, and more than a little mad. I tried music and formulae and everything, staring at my own fingers like they belonged to someone else as I typed in the dark.

I am dead.

So I tried it.

_Dead._

And that was it, of course.

That was what caused the Wellington Arch to explode at four o'clock in the afternoon. I couldn't have known, but I should have deduced it.

Twenty-five people died, John. Twenty-five.

I didn't know what I had done until after I had texted Mycroft to tell him I had broken the code. I was so proud of myself. I started reading everything I could. I was making plans until the car came.

He couldn't look at me.

Every good thing I have ever done has also been bad.

This is a very bad thing, and I know this: if I stop, I fall.

* * *

I keep going. I use the information. I use everything I have.

Ronald Adair is a tall man with fair hair and brown eyes. He has an inconsequential cocaine problem and he likes to gamble. He isn't terribly good at it.

Sebastian Moran likes to gamble.

I find him. It's simple when you know where to go, and it's all been laid out for me like an air traffic pattern.

I gamble. I lose. I lose three thousand pounds in an evening. I go back and do it again.

I find him quickly. I am the sort of creature he likes to hunt. Diffident, foolish, and eager to burn money I haven't earned in a game I don't understand. I am a white rabbit to his tiger.

He's got the most unmusical voice a public school education can confer upon a man. It's flat and dry. He doesn't say much.

I attempt small talk. I always hated it before, and it's dreadful now.

He sits at the table, right foot hooked around his chair leg, and he stares us all down. He doesn't drink much, but all the others do. I do, to an extent. Just enough to be convincing. I am a man with a compulsion. I have a horrific bank balance. I am shy.

My hands shake. Neuropathy, but it looks like the other kind of nerves.

Three days in, I get bored. I slip. I count cards constantly, and the tedium of knowing the answer and not doing anything with it gets to me. I win. Maybe it's the cocaine.

Afterwards, I lean against the wall of the club and light a cigarette wondering whether what I have done can be dismissed as luck.

It can't. I took it too far. I did it several times.

The door swings open and it's him. I smile. It hurts.

"So," he says.

I am a rabbit. My eyes are wide.

"You're smarter than you look," he says. "Was that a joke?"

I talk fast. I fabricate debts and a woman. I apologise. I cry, a little. I'm good at that.

He invites me to join him in another game, if I can do it again. I agree.

We do this several times, and we split the proceeds. He invites me to a private game and gives me the address of his flat.

It's on Baker Street. It's across from 221B. Our flat, in fact.

He has been living there all along, and I had no idea. Mycroft had no idea.

It occurs to me that he is still planning to kill you after all.

* * *

It's almost dark when I get out of the cab. I can see a light in one of the windows of 221B. I see a man's head silhouetted against it. It's you.

I send a text to my brother. If I'd told him what I was doing, he would have tried to stop me, I think. I don't bother with that. Instead, I send him the address and "Sebastian Moran."

I turn off the ringer and stuff the phone into my pocket. I climb the stairs. I knock on the door.

He meets me with a microfibre cloth in his hand. He has been polishing a gun. Of course he has.

It's relatively unfurnished, but I can see signs that he has been here for weeks. It smells of gun oil and burnt toast.

"Please, " he says, nodding towards a chair.

New, cheap pine, seldom used. He likes the one with its back to the wall. The seat is more polished, one leg has been scuffed.

Two Russians arrive. One: bald, early fifties. New tattoos, locally done. Recently divorced. Works in a butcher's shop. Blood on his shoes, wore an apron, didn't change his clothes. Two: in his thirties. Wearing a suit that isn't his. Works in a chippy. Ink on his hands. Oil on his skin.

Moran pours us drinks, and we play. I barely touch mine. I can have one, if I make it last. Cocaethylene contributes to heart failure.

We win. Things get heated. Moran pulls a gun out of the drinks cupboard (it was behind a bottle of metaxa—duty free, Athens?).

They go.

"Cheers," he says. He smiles at me and shakes the ice in his tumbler. I drink the rest of mine. I never did care for whiskey.

He takes away the empty glass, and leans across the table. "We've done rather well tonight," he says.

I agree.

'The gun was a surprise," I say.

The right side of his mouth quirks up. "It shouldn't be," he says. "The thing about me, is, I like to hunt. I get what I am owed."

He doesn't blink. His eyes are green and gold. His pupils are dilated, but the lights are dim.

The lights are wrong. My head jerks. I am suddenly incredibly tired. It's midnight. I am never tired. I had one drink.

I bite my tongue. Pain is good. Pain brings endorphins.

"I like tigers," he says. "Killed one once."

I blink. Don't blink.

"People are easier. Easy to find. Easy to kill."

I press my hands against the table and it seems a million miles away, like my feet.

"John Watson, say."

I am still. I am breath in my lungs. I am a chemical cocktail, going wrong.

"He's across the street. He is mine." He unhooks his leg from the chair. The gun is on the scarred formica countertop. The distance favours him.

"Who is he?" I say.

Sebastian Moran touches his teeth with his tongue. "Who are you?" he says. It isn't really a question.

I say nothing.

"You are a dead man. And the best thing about a dead man is that no one cares when he dies again."

I feel like I am sinking through the floor. I feel like a dull knife is scraping across my optic nerves. I push myself out of my chair and towards the window. The glass is cold and damp against my face. I see your light across the street. I see nothing else.

"You're supposed to be good with detail," he says.

I bite my tongue until it bleeds. "I am," I say.

"Not good enough. I knew who you were the moment I saw you."

Good. Let's talk about me. If we talk about me, someone might come before you move on to the next thing. To John.

"Did you," I drawl. "What was it?"

"Your face."

My face is against the glass. The glass is cold. Cold is good. Invigorating.

"I'm a hunter," he reminds me. "I study my prey."

"Jim is dead, but that's no reason to stop now." He is on his feet. That was fast.

I turn my face away from the window. My depth perception has gone to pieces.

"No?" I ask. "What was he to you?"

"A means to an end. He let me do what I like."

_What does Sebastian Moran like?_

My mouth is dry. I'm going to die.

It's a Sig Sauer P226R, and it's aimed at my head. His breath is shallow. His stance is relaxed.

"I have several guns," he says. "This is the one I want to use."

My head is sliding down the window, almost imperceptibly. We are silhouetted here where anyone could see, but it doesn't matter. No one is looking.

I am going to die right in front of you and you will never even know this.

Think of Moriarty in his box. Pale bones in a brown residue. White mycelium creeping into the sodden wood. A network of something, pushing though. I can push through this.

I could—no. I can't. I can't reach. I can't move. I've crashed. My body is a mistake. This has all been a mistake.

I am too stupid to live.

"The doctor is next," he says. He smiles.

I think of William Blake. I think of the phone buzzing uselessly against my leg. I think of you.

_I want you to live._

The bullet, when it comes, is a surprise.

It punches through the glass.

It catches him in the head.

We fall.


	2. Fearful Symmetry

**Fearful Symmetry**

* * *

**1: Song of Myself**

Sebastian Moran is being patient in a car park. He has a leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass propped against the dash and a Webley Mark VI in his left hand. He enjoys the feel of the old steel beneath his fingers, warm and smooth and heavy. He is equally pleased by the slightly furry texture of the book's pages as he turns them, slowly.

Patience is an art. It is not about self-denial. It is about waiting for the perfect moment. Sebastian is very good at waiting. Waiting with his eye at the scope. Waiting with the best cards in his hand. Waiting for the perfect words to coalesce in his head. Waiting for his prey to make the wrong move, which is also, oh-so-beautifully, the right one.

Now he is waiting for a phone call to tell him that Jim Moriarty is free. The trial should be nearly finished now. Sebastian has been keeping up with the details, but from afar. Someone needs to run the shop, so to speak.

It practically runs itself, because Jim excels at the art of delegation. This leaves Sebastian with nothing but time: time to read, time to think, time to play cards, and time to study people. Specifically, people he will probably need to kill.

Irene Adler isn't dead, for example. She is in California. Sebastian has been given _carte blanche_ to bring her down, and he has been considering the possibilities. Now is not a good time, of course; Jim's long game is entering one of its more dynamic phases. But when it's all done, yes: California.

Sebastian lazily slides the barrel of the revolver against his faded jeans. Irene is not particularly interesting, but California has promise. The San Diego Zoo is constructing a new tiger habitat. It's costing them millions.

Tigers in captivity evoke such mixed feelings in him. Seeing them at all is a benediction. Seeing them surrounded by sticky-fingered children and their prosaic parents is something else entirely. Seeing them caged is a violation of natural law. It is still better than nothing.

He entertains a momentary fantasy in which some great catastrophe occurs (Fire? Earthquake?) and the tigers are released into the hills of San Diego. He thinks of them treading softly yet heavily over the grass of a public park, wide green eyes scanning for small furtive things...

It wouldn't be any good if it did happen, of course. There would still be humans about, and they have a nasty way of spoiling the most beautiful things. They have no respect.

Sebastian destroys things, but not, he thinks, the beautiful ones. Not anymore. There is a beauty in the process of destruction itself, but that is something else altogether.

The bomb and the bullet are deployed as Moriarty directs him, and Sebastian takes pride in doing it well and neatly and, wherever possible, aesthetically. It's something he enjoys, and conveniently, it's something the master criminal needs and is willing to pay him for. Realistically, this contract was his only possible option after all the things he's done.

When allowed the decision, he'll always choose the rifle over explosives. He is good with explosives, of course. They require intelligence and attention to detail. They require fearlessness. In some cases, they even require artistry. But the rifle is more intimate, in his opinion. It needs a strange sort of empathy in the man who operates it. It demands patience and stillness and, to some extent, what he defines as _love_.

Love is a perfect and inexorable focus upon the beloved. It is ownership. It is a red dot wavering on a body in the darkness. It is perfect and complete understanding.

Sebastian is aware that this is not, generally, a popular philosophy. Most certainly not the way he applies it.

_I act as the tongue of you,_ he reads, and his phone buzzes against the leather upholstery of the old Porsche.

"Sebastian," trills the Irishman's voice. "Be a love and take me away from all this. I'm a free man."

"I'm in the car park," he says. "I can be around in five."

He tucks the Webley into the glove compartment with care but leaves the book on the passenger seat.

Jim is easy to spot in his impeccable dove-grey suit. He positively seethes with energy as he slides into the seat beside Sebastian.

"Walt Whitman?" he asks, tossing the book into the back seat.

"Why not? I happen to enjoy him."

"Ah, Sebastian," his employer says, almost admonishingly. "You have such a _beautiful_ soul."

_I don't,_ he thinks, taking the gear shift in hand. _But I know how one's assembled._

* * *

**2: Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves**

Jim Moriarty likes to watch Sebastian read. He is stillness personified, just as he is when he has his eye to a rifle scope.

He finds the older man fascinating. He is so perfectly flawed.

Physically, he's not terribly imposing. He's of average height and build, and his otherwise fine features are somewhat marred by a crooked nose and a scarred eyebrow. He'd be pale yellow if it weren't for his years of exposure to the sun, and his hair is a bit of a mess. He slouches about in broken-down denim and shapeless flannel shirts as if he'd never even met the military, let alone spent years in it. At times, he becomes virtually invisible by being ordinary.

What he does have is green-gold eyes and an unearthly, unshakeable air of calm. His teeth are sharp and surprisingly white when he shows them in one of his rare, always lopsided smiles.

He is a study in contradictions. He speaks flatly, economically, and most unmusically, yet he sometimes writes with an appreciation of language that borders on decadence. Raised in privilege, he lives in nearly complete indifference to the material world, with certain, very specific exceptions. His money (supplied by Jim) goes to books and guns. He plays cards compulsively, but he never loses much.

He left the army under a cloud, and the regiment he claims membership in appears to be fictitious. But Jim has seen his tags, his scars, and the way he shoots. The man saw service, he has no question.

If he is capable of genuine anger, Jim has yet to see it in seven years of acquaintance. The most he manages is mild irritation. He obeys orders so long as he agrees with them, which is very nearly always.

He is, in so many ways, the perfect companion.

* * *

Sebastian Moran has been both the pride and shame of the British Army. When he was eighteen, he saw the most beautiful thing in the world, and he killed it.

* * *

Colonel Sebastian Moran is a man who cannot exist anymore. He is extinct like the Caspian Tiger, but no one mourns his loss.

He is a lesson in the inevitable repercussions of complete obedience. He is the reason human weapons aren't allowed.

* * *

It is easy to claim that the First Bangalore Pioneers never existed when nearly none of them survived. Their name alone was ludicrous, harkening back to the last days of the Indian Army and a steadily contracting British Empire.

What they were was a collection of useful madmen. What they did was what everyone else did, only better and faster. They were snipers and spotters and sappers. They were brilliant and undisciplined and terribly secret.

* * *

Moran is beautifully good with guns. He is capable of a stillness so perfect that it sends chills down the spines of other soldiers. It is rumoured that he is capable of stopping his heart and breath so they won't interfere with a shot.

Moran comes from money. He doesn't flaunt it, but he is well-educated. He is also, at the same time perhaps a little bit foreign, as one might expect from the son of an ambassador to Iran. His only apparent vice is a love of poetry. Despite this, he is well-liked.

He has a spotter and his name is Joe Richardson. He is funny and kind and younger than Moran. He is from Reigate and has a lovely voice.

Moran likes to recite poetry. Some of it is thematically appropriate (Kipling). Some of it is melancholy. Some of it is absurd.

"They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care," Moran will whisper into the radio, and Richardson will answer, "They sought it with forks and with hope."

They have learned not to laugh. Moran's smile is a small, private quirk to one side of his mouth. Richardson rolls his lower lip between his teeth instead.

* * *

They have been partnered together for a year and they're drinking somewhat heavily when Richardson mentions he's rather fond of William Blake. Moran asks how he can be, because the man was so clearly insane, "Not in the good way. It's all blatant religious allegory."

"I dunno... I like the one about the tiger," Richardson says. "We had to learn it when I was at school. The others were completely shit, though."

He recites it, and in a moment of madness, Sebastian tells him the Most Beautiful Thing, which he has never told anyone before, because it is also the Very Bad Thing.

"I killed a tiger once," he says.

* * *

**3: Deaths and Entrances**

The morning of the perfect day comes quickly, and Sebastian showers and dresses and occupies himself with the paper. It is splashed with lurid headlines and photographs of the consulting detective-turned-criminal. He eats, with disinterest: two slices of toast and an apple.

Jim breezes in half an hour later in the Westwood and a leather-collared coat. The buttons are, ridiculously, skull-stamped.

"Morning, darlin'," he says, and leans down to slide the cold weight of the Beretta 92FX INOX against his jaw. "I'm taking this."

He nods, and in a perfect parody of cozy domesticity gets up and makes Jim Moriarty a cup of tea. Sebastian never drinks tea. He hates the jittery feeling stimulants bring. They make stillness an impossibility. Despite this, he is good at preparing it.

It is easy to do him these little kindnesses as if they meant something. He does not mistake them for trust or for love. Jim is, himself, capable of neither. It's comfortable.

Sebastian checks and rechecks his bag. He hooks his foot against the warm oak chair and drums his fingers lightly over his black denim thigh. He sends a quick text to the Czech who is watching Baker Street. Jim flits about the flat like a demented moth, humming to himself. Sebastian cannot place the tune, but of course, he is tone deaf and never could.

They get in the car, and Sebastian takes them to Bart's. He lets Jim out and it is only when he arrives in the car park, when he's taking his bag out of the boot, that he sees the book.

There's a note in Moriarty's spiky hand:

_Tiger-boy,_

_Today is the perfect day. Thought you might enjoy this one._

_-Jim_

It's black cloth with illegible silver lettering on the spine. He opens it.

_Songs of Experience_

_William Blake_

_Minton, Balch and Co._

_New York_

_1927_

The pages are delicate vellum. They smell of dust.

He shoves it back in the boot and feels something dangerous tickle the back of his throat. It feels like anger. It might be grief.

He puts it aside.

* * *

Sebastian Moran is in a stairwell with a lovingly assembled L96A1, waiting for his spotter to make contact, eye to the scope. He has two objectives and all the time in the world. One, he will observe the meeting of Jim Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. If needs be, he will intervene, although that was not discussed. Two, he will act upon the outcome of that meeting.

There are two probable outcomes to the rooftop meeting, and two probable responses.

Outcome one: Sherlock Holmes does not jump to his death. Moran shoots the doctor.

Outcome two: Sherlock Holmes dies. Moran lets the doctor go.

The thing about Jim is, he's impulsive, but he's also very good at getting what make people tick. He says Sherlock Holmes will die, so die he will. He is equally sure that John Watson will make an appearance at Bart's (he is not there now). The man has the loyalty of a spaniel, and despite everything that has gone down, he's still running after his master. Last night, they ran hand in hand. They were cuffed together at the time.

Moran has become intimately familiar with the doctor over the last couple of weeks. He's watched him in the Tesco late at night, and at the clinic during the day. He's seen him storm out of the flat at Baker Street, and he's seen him hauled away in a police car. If he was an artist, he could sketch the passionate folds of the man's face without a reference. He looks almost disappointed in the times without danger.

* * *

Sebastian Moran is not an adrenaline junkie. He finds poetry in focus. He enjoys the details of preparation (assembling the gun, establishing his position) because they are precursors to the perfect shot.

He watches Jim perched on the rooftop, thrumming with thwarted energy. He hates him, a little. He banishes it. He stills himself.

Sherlock Homes arrives, stands still. Moriarty buzzes around him like a horsefly.

Jim has the Beretta, but Moran feels the customary disquiet that comes with having a target compromised by interference.

The Czech texts. John Watson has returned to the flat and promptly departed again.

Sherlock Holmes has grasped Jim Moriarty by the lapels.

Despite their height differential, the angle is bad. Jim is in the way.

Holmes releases him. Moriarty steps back.

Moran stills his breath.

Holmes steps onto the ledge.

Moriarty wheels away.

Holmes is laughing. He skips away from the ledge.

The two men are pulled together again as if by magnetic force. They are talking.

Holmes orbits Moriarty.

They are still. They could be lovers, eye to eye.

* * *

_You have eyes like... a... fucking _tiger_, Richardson gasps into his ear, and Sebastian doesn't know whether the small sound that escapes him then is because he's crying or he's coming._

* * *

Moriarty is smiling. They shake hands.

Moriarty is nodding like a broken puppet. His hand is in his coat.

His mouth is open, as if to scream.

The Beretta.

He has just...

Moran exhales, unblinking as Moriarty rocks backward in a spray of blood, as Holmes reels away, coat flapping around him.

Moran stills. He could take Holmes now.

That was not the order.

That was not the order.

He folds the gun away.

He goes.

* * *

**4: Les Fleurs Du Mal**

Sebastian drives home to his flat and leaves the damned book burning a hole in the boot.

He cleans his guns. He reads. He checks his accounts and is not surprised to see that he is still being paid as he was before.

He tries not to think of tigers. He finds it easy not to think of Jim, even as he watches over his empire. If someone finds the body, it never makes the news. He suspects it was taken care of, by someone. It's not important.

He dutifully maintains specific contacts, but allows others to lapse. He watches dispassionately as things fall apart. It is to be expected that certain arrangements cannot hold without the touch of the man who took such joy in managing them. Unless someone asks him for information, he doesn't volunteer. Command has never appealed to him much.

He does not go to California. She's still there, he knows, but he feels no pressing need to find her now.

* * *

Grafitti springs up around London. _I believe in Sherlock Holmes_, he reads on buildings and Tube platforms and bus stops. Clearly someone is taking a more official interest in recent events, too. Who, he doesn't know, but certain groups of people are being apprehended, and it no longer looks coincidental. _It could be Holmes' brother,_ he thinks. But it could be John Watson.

It could be something or someone stranger still. What, he does not articulate, even to himself. He is good at finding signs, at recognising patterns. This feels like something rustling in the grass.

The thought of the unfinished mission is like an ulcer. It eats at him like the book in the boot of his car.

* * *

A rusty sense of duty emerges, insists that he look for the doctor again. He's been staying with his sister, Harriet. It doesn't last for long.

He watches the man as he used to watch him. He looks tired and stiff and sad as he returns to Baker Street. He doesn't go out much these days. _You could be my target_, Sebastian thinks to him. _You_ are _mine._

A flat opens up across the street from 221B. In an uncharacteristic moment of impulse, Sebastian takes on the lease, leaving almost everything behind him when he goes. It's not a particularly nice flat. It's not important.

He can't seem to concentrate when he reads anymore. He turns pages, and realises they have failed to leave any lasting impression on his mind. By day, he surfs the internet and watches the house across the street. By night, he looks for card games. That, at least, is something he can still focus on.

He watches the faces and hands across the table from him with a mile-long stare. He plays. He wins, and the predatory thing inside him unfurls itself a little more each time he does.

* * *

One morning he follows John Watson to Tesco (it's efficient, really—he needs shopping of his own), and when he exits at an entirely coincidental-looking distance behind him, he sees the familiar figure stumble over a grate at the street crossing. He falls to one knee and several tins of beans go rolling into the gutter as the bag bursts upon impact.

_Never make contact with the target_, but of course, working for Jim overwrote that lesson years ago.

"Oh, bloody hell," John Watson says, surveying the remains of his shopping as he rights himself.

"We are all lying in the gutter," Sebastian states absently, and bends down to pull beans to safety and stack them on the kerb.

"...but some of us are looking at the stars?" the doctor concludes, with a startled laugh.

"Well... yes. Possibly." Sebastian flashes his teeth at him, and starts to move away.

"Hey, thanks," John Watson says, touching his arm before he can. "Don't know what came over me."

Lack of sleep, Sebastian thinks, but he hovers for a moment. "You okay, then?"

"Just about," he says, with a frown. "Not sure how I'm going to get this home now." He exhales a small sound of disappointment. His other carrier bag is full to straining.

Sebastian remembers something he used to do in the army. "We're neighbours, I think. On Baker Street? Here." He strips off his flannel overshirt, and lays it on the ground. They pile cans into it and form a sort of makeshift sack.

"I should have thought of that myself," John says. "I've got this jumper."

"S'all right. The wool would stretch a bit. This at least will take you to yours in safety."

"Well, if you don't mind," John says, his blue eyes creasing at the perceived kindness of the stranger. "I'll only be a moment once we're there."

They walk together in what feels like companionable silence, until John starts and apologetically offers his own name. It occurs to Sebastian that he hasn't really planned for this contingency.

"Ah, Bill. Bill Richardson," he says, because it's the first name he can think of. _What a terrible name,_ he thinks. Not important.

"So, in the forces, Bill?" John asks, and Sebastian thanks the god he doesn't believe in that he gave the man a lie, because he's lived with a detective for years and of course some things were bound to rub off.

"Yes. Yes, I was. Good guess."

"It's the scar," John says, easily. "I've seen a few before. Rifle scope, was it?"

Sebastian nods. He is chatting with John Watson. It's such a simple thing.

"I was a medic. We notice these things."

"Afghanistan?" Sebastian asks, because he can.

"Yeah. Got shot, so..." He shrugs a bit. "You?"

"I was there for a bit. Not something I talk about much. You know."

John does, of course. "I do," he says, and they're nearly there. "Can you wait for a second? I'll just run these in and get your shirt back to you."

Sebastian nods and watches him balance the bag and the bundle with practiced ease as he opens the door. _If you knew how many times I've seen you do that_, he thinks, and flexes his foot against the step as he waits.

He hears voices inside. Mrs. Hudson, of course. The landlady.

He is still.

"And I'm back, " John says, folding up Sebastian's shirt. "Thanks. That was a good idea you had." He offers him his hand, and they shake, awkwardly.

"Well. See you around."

"See you," Sebastian says, and returns to his flat.

* * *

They bump into one another from time to time after that, sometimes wholly accidentally.

In a moment of madness, Sebastian buys some tea one Sunday.

The next time they meet, he invites John in for a cup. It's what people do.

Sebastian even drinks some himself. It's not going to kill him, is it? They talk about books, the weather, the clinic, and Mrs. Hudson. Sebastian never asks about Sherlock Holmes and John never mentions him. It's better that way.

"Play cards, much?" John asks, looking around at the cheaply furnished kitchen. Sebastian has left a poker deck on the table. The guns are in his bedroom. He's not stupid.

"I do, yes." Sebastian slides his fingers across them, lovingly. "Keeps me occupied." He touches his canine with his tongue. "I gamble a little. Sometimes."

John smiles ruefully. "I never could. Too many addictive personalities in my life," he says. "Not that you... You know what I mean."

Oh, he does.

"My sister's a drinker. And my flatmate... well. He, um. All sorts of things."

Well, indeed.

"My father gambled away all his money while I was in the army," Sebastian says, so John won't have to keep talking. "I don't let it get the better of me."

"Well. Good. That's good."

_How did we get here, _Sebastian wonders. _What am I doing?_

They could be friends, these two men. Friends who never discuss anything terribly personal. It's nice. It's comfortable. And for all that John is just a shadow of his former self, he is precisely that. Comfortable. It's in his cheerful jumpers and his weary smile. He's been falling apart, and he still goes to the clinic every day to put other people back together. He is a good man.

He is absolutely not the pathetic cur Moriarty liked to call him. He's funny, and he's kind, and he's strong. It's a shame.

_Sherlock Holmes never knew what he had,_ Sebastian thinks, and he shows him out with his crooked smile.

_See you._

* * *

**5: Une Saison en Enfer**

It's a Sunday afternoon, and they're drinking tea and watching telly in his flat when it happens.

The Wellington Arch has been blown up. It's a Sunday. People are there with their families.

John drops his cup and they watch the brown liquid slowly spread across the table in silence.

"Oh god," he says. He grips the table with whitened knuckles and Sebastian stares and everything slows.

Of course.

He wired it for Jim. Months ago, in fact. Why no one noticed before now...

It's a sign. It's a track in the long grass. Something is coming, on heavy velvet feet.

"I've got to go," John says, in a strangled voice. "Doctor. They'll need people. Bill, I have to go, okay?"

Sebastian is frozen, foot hooked around the rung of his chair like an anchor. He nods, too late. "Yes," he says, as the door swings closed.

They will.

* * *

It's a bad week for London. It's a bad week for Sebastian Moran.

_What did you do, Jim? What does this mean?_

He sleeps fitfully at best.

* * *

_He's eighteen years old and the man hands him a rifle._

_Look. There he is._

_The grass rustles and Sebastian steadies the polished wood of the stock against his shoulder._

_Be still._

_There it is. It's a velvet thing, in black and burnt orange. Its eyes are green and gold and without fear._

_It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Lush, and wild, and burning with life, the way he feels himself burn. His heart stops._

_Now, the man says._

_He squeezes the trigger._

* * *

_He's twenty-seven and he's stretched out in the dirt with his eye on the scope, just like always._

_Now, Richardson says, and Moran squeezes the trigger._

_Now and now and now._

_And they go back to camp and everything's silent until the next morning, when the officers come and everything burns._

_A _mistake,_ they say, and _civilians_, and _wrong_._

_Sebastian lies in his bunk and stares at the insides of his eyelids and sees the tiger falling again._

_Be still, Richardson says, and touches his face with damp fingers._

_Be still, and he walks away._

_Be still, so Sebastian lies still until he hears the gunshot._

_He stops his heart._

_He takes his rifle with him._

* * *

Sebastian wakes up and takes the book out of the car and puts it on the fire, even though it's August. It burns beautifully. It is perfect.

* * *

He finds a game and when a gawky young man with fair hair and brown eyes sits down at the table, he stares at him and thinks, _I see you._

He says his name is _Ronald Adair_, and he fidgets at the loose cuffs of his oversized shirt with trembling, nicotine-stained fingers, and he loses and he loses.

He's thin and he's shy, and his voice sounds raw. He taps his foot under the table like he's transmitting telegraphy. His lips are bitten ragged and his pupils shine with something even Sebastian knows is some sort of drug.

And he's so very stupid, because his is not a face that can be disguised, no matter what feckless expression he chooses to plaster over it.

_Sherlock Holmes,_ Sebastian thinks, and he stills himself, and he stares, and he plays the game.

Three days later, and he's back again, twisting in his seat like a rabbit in a snare.

_Cocaine_, Sebastian thinks, watching him rubbing at his arms. _Intravenous._

When he wins a few too many hands and a not-inconsequential sum of money, Sebastian waits for him to leave the table and then, ten counts later, follows him outside.

"You're smarter than you look," he says. "Was that a joke?"

Everything he's heard about the man is true. He summons tears like it's the easiest thing in the world and sobs out a ridiculous tale of hardship and confusion.

This is going to be so simple, after all.

"Can you do it again?" Sebastian asks, running his tongue over his teeth. "Because if you can..."

He invites him to several more games over the course of the week, and every night he goes home afterwards and lies on his bed with a gun in his hand. He's listening to the sound of invisible wind rustling through grass.

_I am going to put you down_, he whispers. _Like a dog._

* * *

Getting hold of the Rohypnol is nearly as easy as getting hold of the two Russians. He pours himself a whiskey, polishes the Sig Sauer 226R, and sticks it in the drinks cupboard behind the bottle of metaxa left behind by the previous tenant. There is very little whiskey left in the bottle, so he drops the tablets in it and watches them dissolve.

A cab arrives, and Holmes gets out. He glances at the window across the street, where a figure is moving about, silhouetted against the lights in 221B.

_Tonight_, Sebastian thinks, and_ John will never need to know about any of this._

He wipes condensation from the table with his polishing cloth and answers the door.

"Please, " he says, and nods to one of the chairs.

* * *

Andrei and Yevgeny arrive. Sebastian pours them vodka, and for Holmes, the rest of the whiskey. He'll have plenty of time. He knows the man barely drinks a thing.

They play, and as agreed, the Russians kick up a fuss when they lose. Sebastian sees them off with the gun, and lays it on the table.

_You are mine_, he thinks, and salutes his partner of the evening.

Holmes drinks, wrinkling his nose at the taste of the whiskey.

"We've done rather well tonight," Moran says. He watches his quarry, as if from a distance, but he can see the rapid pulse in his long pale throat.

"The gun was a surprise," Holmes says, and he's forgotten to modulate his voice to sound like lost little Ronald Adair.

"It shouldn't be," Moran says. "The thing about me, is, I like to hunt. I get what I am owed."

For all that Holmes is a hardened junkie, the Rohypnol is clearly having an effect now. Moran has no idea what cocaine and alcohol and sedatives might be doing, all jumbled together in his blood, but it's probably nothing good.

Perhaps it burns.

_Perhaps it should._

"I like tigers," Moran says conversationally. "Killed one once."

Holmes gazes at him with glassy tea-coloured eyes. They're a lie, which seems appropriate under the circumstances.

"People are easier. Easy to find. Easy to kill."

Not a word. Not a squeak. Interesting in a man who apparently lives to hear the sound of his own voice.

"John Watson, say," Moran whispers, leaning into the stillness. _The friend you don't deserve. _"He's across the street. He is mine."

Holmes fixes him with distant eyes and says, coldly, "Who is he?"

"Who are you?" Moran asks, but it's a statement. "You are a dead man. And the best thing about a dead man is that no one cares when he dies again."

Holmes twists himself out of the chair and stumbles to the window. Moran waits, unblinking.

"You're supposed to be good with detail," he says.

"I am," Holmes states, sounding of all things, wounded.

"Not good enough. I knew who you were the moment I saw you."

"Did you," he says, drawing the words out like they bore him. "What was it?"

"Your face," Moran says levelly.

"I'm a hunter," he explains, running his eyes over Holmes, almost lovingly, because it is nearly time. "I study my prey."

He feels strong and free and _right_ as he stands and reaches for the gun.

"I know Jim is dead, but that's no reason to stop now."

"No?" Holmes asks, rolling his head against the glass, eyes drifting shut. "What was he to you?"

_Everything. Nothing at all._

"A means to an end. He let me do what I like."

Moran raises the gun. This won't be perfect, and he finds he feels no regret. None at all.

"I have several guns," he says. "This is the one I want to use."

Holmes is sliding down the glass, millimetre by millimetre.

_Yes, look me in the eye,_ Moran thinks.

"The doctor is next," he says. It's a lie.

_Mere men cannot be entrusted with beautiful things_.

He stills his breath.

_Now._


	3. Things To Do When You're Alone

**Things to Do When You're Alone**

* * *

**1: If You Were to Kill Me Now**

4:33 and I cannot get back to sleep. Another horrible fucking dream. Plenty of contenders for that these days.

This one wasn't about the war, or—

Well, it wasn't about you.

It was about me being chased through the dark by someone I thought was a friend. Nice bloke from uni. We did anatomy labs together. I haven't seen him in years, actually, so goodness knows where that came from. Anyway, he had a knife, and I had nothing.

I woke up and thought I had been screaming, but naturally I wasn't. Just lying there with my arms folded across my chest. Everything was terribly still. I should have heard you downstairs, doing _something._

Something annoying, probably. That'd be fine. I could come downstairs and tell you to piss off, and then I'd make us tea. And I'd stay up until it was time for work because you'd have something interesting you wanted to tell me about. Or I'd come down and find you asleep on the sofa, and check you hadn't left the gas on or worse.

Once I came down and found you'd fallen asleep with a handful of biros in assorted colours. I watched them fall out of your hand (which was over your head—how does anyone fall asleep like that?) and slowly hit you, one by one, in the face. You didn't wake up. To be fair, that was after a particularly harrowing week. After the pool. I don't think I ever did tell you about that. I should have.

I've got absolutely nothing to do tomorrow. I was put on probation at the clinic, and I suppose I can't blame anyone for that except myself. I could, but I won't. I assaulted a police officer—the Chief Superintendent—and this time, there was only so much Greg could do about that, after everything else.

I've been here, and that's punishment enough. I'm sorry, but it is. I look around the flat, and nearly everything is yours.

I don't think I can stay here anymore.

I tried to clean out the fridge the other day. It was unusually clean already. A couple of petri dishes. Some off milk. Some _very_ off cheese. No thumbs. No blood. I never did ask you why _that_ was in there, or where it came from. As if that matters. It doesn't, does it?

Blood is... Not a thing I should think about. It's what I see when I close my eyes, more often than not. I have seen—I have _touched_—enough blood for a lifetime. The blood of friends.

I keep seeing yours. On the ground, and on your face.

The cabs wouldn't take you the last time you looked like that. No one's taking you anywhere now.

Why am I talking to you, Sherlock? You're not here. You're never going to say anything again. What you did say was bad enough.

Why did you say those things? Why did you say them to _me?_ As if you could make me hate you.

All right. I do hate you. Right now, I really do.

Friends don't do that, what you did. I know you never cared much for that kind of consideration, but even you should have worked that one out.

Why on earth didn't you trust me enough to tell me what you were doing? Because yes: I would have stopped you. But maybe I could have helped you find another way to handle things. I refuse to believe your reputation mattered that much. In fact, I know it didn't.

You were a show-off, yes. The biggest. But I know what mattered most to you: being right. How the hell was this, in any way, right?

There are plenty of people I should be angry with. Moriarty, of course. That reporter, and everyone who believed their lies. Most of the people from the Yard. Myself for being so thick I couldn't work out what you were doing until it was too late. But I keep coming back to you, and it makes me sick.

Sometimes I find this thought in my head that I've missed something. Something enormous and terrifying.

How can you be dead? How is that even remotely a possibility? You went around all the time as if you were immortal, and god help me, I think I even began to believe it myself. I've seen you do so many dangerous, so many _stupid_ things, and every damned time you walked away.

You should have had wings, you mad bastard.

Sometimes people do survive that sort of fall. Not very well, but they do. I thought—for a second—no, I _hoped_, that you had managed it. But then I saw your eyes, and they saw nothing.

I don't even remember how I got there, to you, but I do remember that. Your eyes, so horribly blank. Tried to take your pulse, but they wouldn't let me.

I know I had a knock on the head, and I know that the sedatives and the shock and the rest of it makes everything that happened afterwards seem strange and wrong.

Actually, it _was_ wrong.

That's a bit... odd.

St. Bart's doesn't have an A&E anymore. And ambulances don't come by the pathology building, do they? So what happened, exactly? How were they there before I was? All those people? I didn't lose much time on the ground. I _know_ I didn't.

What does that mean?

You'd know.

It's just a little thing, but now it's going to bother me. There's got to be a perfectly rational explanation. I should ask Molly. Or Mike.

No. I can't. I can't talk to them right now. They're all so kind, so careful. The thing about kindness is, _it_ _doesn't fucking work_ sometimes.

Is that the sort of argument you would have made? Oh god, it is, isn't it? I am not, _not _allowed to become you. You've changed me, but not like that.

Honestly, though. I can't take all this solicitous behaviour from our friends. It makes it all worse. Makes _me_ feel worse for being angry.

The maddening thing about all of this is that I am so used to watching other people get through it. Grief. Know the stages of. God.

I know how this goes, and it's a bit frightening, really. Because someday I'm going to wake up, and there'll be a blank space where Sherlock Holmes should be. And how could that possibly ever be true?

I suppose in your case, I should call it dark matter. Suits you better.

Dark matter. I wonder whether you knew what that was. You were so selective, if brilliant. I can't think about the solar system without calling you a git, after all. You must have been hell on toast in primary school. I'd ask your brother, but I think we've hit the point where I will never be kidnapped by him again. That suits me fine.

How the hell did he manage to let this happen? The man's got cameras all over London. Probably all over the country. Probably in our flat. I've got half a mind to go back to his ridiculous club and make him tell me. I suppose they lock you up and throw away the key if you stab the British Government with his own umbrella.

He'd better be running Moriarty down. Come to think of it, the man must be sitting on enough evidence to... to... do _something,_ anyway.

Why didn't he stop this? Any of it? Clearly he cared enough about his brother to attempt to bribe me into being his minder. He made me search the flat for drugs. He made me tell him lies about Irene Adler. So where the hell was he all this time? Oh, right. Selling Sherlock out for information. Did he get what he wanted, then? Just...Just find Moriarty and have him killed, would you, Mycroft?

Ha. Or I could do it myself.

Don't be stupid, John. Clearly, what justice requires is a doctor run mad. No. Life isn't a film. You wouldn't be able to find him, let alone work out a way to kill him.

God, I wish I could.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Oh, right.

I suppose the responsible thing would be to see my—**No**. I'm not doing that. Not right now. It wouldn't help.

Yeah, so.

I should call Harry. That's a distraction. Perhaps I can stay with her for a bit. Do something useful. Try not to kill her.

That's a good deed.

So... I'll give it a few hours. I can do that.

I will.

* * *

**2: There's Always Something**

Things not to think about (on the train):

The flat

Your things in the flat

The violin

Your things _not_ in the flat

The skull

The chemistry equipment going to a school

Your books going... _not_ to a school

Things left behind in the flat

Things I left behind in the flat

Things I took away from the flat

_You'll _never know, so why do I feel guilty?

Because I invaded your privacy.

Dead men don't care about that sort of thing.

_Obviously._

You would, though.

_Irrelevant._

I stole something from you.

_Interesting._

Stop.

I'm on a train to Swindon. Harry moved there with Clara six years ago. Last time I was there, I was just passing through on my way to London. My sister had just split up with Clara (again), was completely pissed the entire time I was there, and gave me her phone. The engraved one with the scratches on it.

Stop.

Swindon. Well, it's not London, is it? So that's good. This is exactly what I should be doing.

Harry says she's stopped drinking. I wonder what that will be like. It's a bit sad to think that our relationship has largely revolved around me being angry with her and her being angry with me because I'm angry. Also me being gone, of course, and all those maudlin (yeah, okay: _drunken_) messages she used to send me. In Afghanistan. On the blog. On my phone.

**John, why don't you write to me? Just once?**

_I do. Not often, I know. But I _do.

**John, I've fucked it up again. Everything. Be glad you don't have a girlfriend. Or do you? No. Can't imagine you do.**

_You're right about that. No time, anyway._

**John, I've knit you a jumper. I saw something about it being cold at night in Afghanistan. Sorry it's a bit late for Christmas.**

_It was massive, and a bit weird, but yeah. That was nice. Didn't know you knew how._

**OMG, John! I knew something bad would happen! Are you coming home?**

_Possibly. When they've finished with me. When the paperwork is done. When I'm not completely rotten with painkillers. Define "home."_

**John, Clara'd legt me. For good.**

_And I can see you're drunk because of the typos._

**John, I worry about you and that new flatmate you have.**

_Don't._

***comment deleted***

_What now, Harry?_

**I've stopped drinking.**

_Good._

* * *

I glance around the compartment at the other travellers. I'm tired of seeing my own face reflected in the window, and the landscape is predictable.

To my left, there's a pretty blonde woman (mid-thirties) with two equally blonde children, a boy and a girl. She's wearing a blue dress with a floral pattern. Not terribly expensive-looking. No ring on her hand, no tan line where one should be. She is reading from a tablet or an e-reader (I'm not clear on the difference, exactly. Something electronic). The kids are well-behaved and neatly dressed. The girl might be seven and the boy four or five. They're sharing a big picture book of (appropriately enough) British Rail trains. Not cartoon ones, real ones. They have their heads together and are whispering. He's asking questions, she's answering. A proud big sister, then.

I wonder where their father is. Have they got one? She's clearly their mother; the family resemblance is quite strong.

They look happy. Harry and I might have looked like that once. Ages the other way round, of course, and a bit further apart. _Our_ father wouldn't have been with us, either. Mum would have been wearing her ring, though. She almost never took it off. Just to do the washing-up.

Kids. I wonder if I'll have them someday. Well, and a wife, of course. That's the first step... I suppose I might be running out of time for that one. Having kids, I mean. I wouldn't want to be the embarrassing ancient dad turning up at school plays and making awkward conversation with my daughter's dates. Would I have daughters? Would they be like Harry? Would I be like my father?

Okay. You probably _shouldn't_ have kids, John. Although if I did, and they were gay, I'd be fine with that. Better than my parents were about Harry, surely. Well. That was twenty years ago. I suppose most people were a bit funny with that. I suppose I was a bit funny about it myself when Harry brought a girl home from school with her. Or was that because Dad was awful about it and I was just... Just awkward. I didn't say anything bad—I just didn't say enough, really. Should have tried.

Aha! The woman _is_ married. Or something. He must have been in the loo. I clearly wasn't paying any attention when we boarded the car. I was a bit preoccupied, I guess. Anyway, seems like a decent bloke, if a bit boring looking. Kissing her cheek. She's smiling. Wonder what he does for a living. Absolutely no idea. Shoes... Well, work boots of some kind. Has a bit of a tan. Works outdoors? He's got a shirt on with a Tube symbol on it. Tourists? Must be. Had a family weekend in London. Just a weekend, because they don't seem to have lots of luggage with them. Well, but they might. The bigger bags are stowed by the door. But I don't think so.

Why don't I think so?

It is _perfectly ordinary_ to look at people and wonder about their lives. It is completely fine and sane. People do it all the time.

Why did I look at her hands, then?

She's attractive. Reflex?

_Do I do that?_

Okay. I look at people because I think someone will quiz me later, and I'll get most of it wrong.

No.

Noticing people (_observing them_) is completely fine. I've always noticed people. I'm a doctor. Yes, I am a doctor. I am, I have been, and I will be again.

Good. Talk to Sarah in a week or so. She's understanding. Mostly understanding. When she doesn't think I'm mad. I'm not. I'm just—

I wish I had a book. Or a newspaper. No. Not a newspaper.

Text Harry?

_Harry, I'm.._. I'm on the train. Idiot. She knows that.

_Harry, can I bring anything... _What, from the **train?** No.

_Harry, want to see a film tonight? _No. That's a bit too _Good to see you! Let's not talk for a few hours!_

No.

* * *

As it happens, we do not go to see a film, and we do talk, but that's all right. She looks good. Rested, even. Younger than I am, for the first time in years. Hands, not shaking. Eyes clear. She's driving again, so things must have stayed manageable.

Her house is a bit bare, but it looks clean. She still has watercolours in Clara's delicate hand hung on the walls, but they seem to fit. The rest of her decor is modern, carefully tasteful.

She's working for a technology firm, which is apparently what Swindon has quite a lot of now. Still in Marketing, and I still can't quite imagine her doing _that_. But she always has been charming, even if that charm sometimes had to come out of a bottle. I suppose Dad was the same way

She shows me a room with pink sheets and a case full of books, mostly murder mysteries. Can't get away from that, it seems, but at least I know that I am unlikely to encounter anything there that _you_ would approve of. Certainly not the titles.

I help her make dinner, which is beautifully ordinary and involves a pleasing range of summer vegetables that I have to help slice. Not much kitchen gear, but I suppose Clara took most of it when she left.

Clara, who I do not mention, just as she does not mention you. And I can feel the shapes of two people we're very carefully _not mentioning_ pressing behind the words we are saying, but I feel calm, better than I have felt in ages.

We talk about her trip to Germany (business) and I talk about some trips I've taken myself (Dublin, for a conference), New Zealand (to see a friend). Because I mention New Zealand, she asks if it looks like Middle Earth, and I say, "Absolutely, but much safer without all the orcs and mad wizards."

Harry says she wishes she lived in a Hobbit hole and I say that would be lovely. She says she thinks the built-in shelves they have in their holes are brilliant, and I agree (but for a moment I see hideous wallpaper instead of wood, so I look out the window for a bit).

"We should have a film festival," she says. "I've got all the DVDs."

"I'd like that," I say. "Perhaps you've also got some friends who can join us."

She's quiet for a moment and smiles, and says, "I do, actually."

"Are any of them straight and single?" I ask.

"Mostly the men," she says, and I throw a tasteful sofa cushion at her, but I've forgotten she's got this positively brutal throwing arm on her. I have to admit defeat right quick because I'm tired and my shoulder's a bit stiff.

We drink some expensive ginger beer and she tells me about a redhead that works in her office who is not quite, but _nearly_ as pretty as Karen Gillan, but neither so tall nor so Scottish. Then we talk about Doctor Who, and whether the next Doctor will be ginger, or a woman, or a ginger woman (Harry says she should be a woman, but not ginger; I say both), and I realise I haven't had a conversation like this in ages. Certainly not with Harry, but really, not with _anyone_. And that's a bit sad.

Eventually she says, "Well, I've got to work in the morning. You can watch telly if you want to stay up."

She gives me the remote control and turns out most of the lights. I mean to turn it on, but I sit there in the dark, just breathing and listening to a barking dog. Before I know it, I've fallen asleep.

I dream about New Zealand and Hobbits in gardens, and I'm dimly aware that it's turning into that party they had in the first film. I'm standing on a hillside with a woman who is my wife. My _Hobbit_ wife, which must mean that I'm also a Hobbit, although quite a tall one, thank you very much. She's got gorgeous red hair and a lovely smile, and she's holding my hand as we watch the others setting up what must be, yes, the fireworks. I think, _That's not terribly safe. Everything's so flammable,_ but it doesn't bother me the way it should.

They set off the one that turns into a dragon, and it flies low over the tents, all sparks and burning. She turns to me and laughs and says, _It's all a magic trick, _as it burns out and falls over the garden, dark and diminished.

I desperately need to remember something, something _important,_ and I can't.

_What's the magic trick?_

_What am I not seeing?_

_Did I get something wrong?_

There's always something.

* * *

**3: The Second Pillar**

It seems I've been judged sane enough to return to work.

That's something. And it's interesting, isn't it? All I had to do was decide on a course of action and all the pieces fell into place. Because I am sane _enough._

Sane enough to convince my sister I'll be fine. Sane enough to convince my therapist I trust her. The irony is, I think that this sanity of mine actually takes a certain sort of madness to achieve convincingly. Or maybe that's all anyone ever does. Might be, at that.

For some reason, we've decided as a culture that mourning has to happen a certain way. We're supposed to choose to let someone go, to move on.

Well, I've chosen not to choose, in a way.

If I were gone and you were not, would you sometimes forget this and speak to me as if I were still there? I think you might. You always did before.

I am not you, and I cannot forget that you are gone.

I'm not going to make you cups of tea you'll never drink. I'm not going to send you texts you'll never answer. I will, and this is important, never address you aloud.

I did that once, and you were still dead, because _life is not a fucking fairy tale._

I am moving back to the flat. Our flat. I talked to Mrs. Hudson, and it's fine.

I am going to work when the clinic needs me. I talked to Sarah, and that's fine.

I am going to see Mike and Bill and possibly even Greg Lestrade. We will watch films and drink beer.

I will do all of these things, and I am still going to keep thinking about what you said to me, and _why_ you might have said it. Because now I think there was something else you wanted me to hear. Something that might be useful.

You always wanted me to try to work things out myself. It's not easy, but I'm trying.

* * *

There are some things I've never told you. Things about me, of course, but also things about you.

You made a _terrible_ sociopath.

You never told me lies if you could help it. You were perfectly willing to allow me to believe some pretty dreadful things about you, but you were careful not to lie. While that says some interesting things about your psyche, it does not actually say _sociopath._ Which is, incidentally, no longer the approved term for what you pretended to be. "Antisocial Personality Disorder" doesn't sound quite as bad, does it? Not bad enough.

You wanted to be a crime scene_._ Your words were the tape.

You _were_ fond of people. Not everyone, to be sure, but you were. Mrs. Hudson, to name but one.

Recently, I've had to come to terms with the notion that I said some very, very bad things to you, about you not caring when I thought Mrs. Hudson was dying; about you being a machine instead of a person.

I think you were responsible for that telephone call; that's why you pretended, yes, _pretended_ not to care. I think I needed to leave, not so you could think, but so you could do something without me there to get in the way.

_What was it?_

I ask myself this, and I feel so strange. Angry and hopeful at the same time.

This was one of the things that made me realise that the trick to getting through therapy is only talking about half of what you believe.

My therapist thinks you wanted to distance me so I wouldn't be hurt by what you did. Not successfully, I'd argue. Frankly, that seems simplistic.

She also thinks our friendship was monumentally fucked up. My words, not hers. I do all the swearing, as per usual.

I wonder what she'd say if I told her everything?

* * *

Here's something I never told you:

I found something strange once. In my wardrobe, under a floorboard. I left it where it was. More importantly, I never told your brother, or Greg, or _you_ what I had found.

It's a red leather case, narrow and reasonably small. I think it's the kind of leather they used to call _morocco._ It has gold decorations stamped into it, but otherwise, it's quite shabby.

You, of course, would know exactly what's inside.

By the time I found it, it was already clear to me that your past was a bit more colourful than I might have suspected. So the hypodermic? Not a big surprise. The old straight razor? Practical and elegant, I suppose. A touch dramatic. The capped test tube with white lumps in it? I'd call that positively anticlimactic.

The scrap of paper wrapped around the glass was the thing that made me carefully put everything back in its place and pretend I'd never seen it.

The handwriting was yours, of course. I've seen it often enough, sometimes elegant, sometimes spiky and urgent, sometimes just a childish scrawl. Always unmistakably yours.

This was very carefully inscribed: _γνῶθι σεαυτόν_

It has been decades since I did a bit of Greek in school. I wasn't terribly good at it, although the alphabet stuck in my head for some reason. It took me quite a while to remember what the words meant. Later, it took me far too long to look them up on the computer at work to check I was right.

What I remembered was, there were supposed to be two inscriptions at Delphi. Two pillars, I think, although I might be wrong. The two things together, as Mr. Davies impressed upon us, meant far more than either one could alone. They were, essentially, a lesson in How To Be Good.

It's the things people _don't_ say that often seem to be the most important. It's the things you don't quite see at first that turn out to be the most important, too. You've often said as much.

I think the thing you didn't write was this: _μηδεν ἀγαν_

Whether you couldn't write it, or simply chose not to, I'll probably never know.

What I do know is this: When things got bad, I used to go back and check the box sometimes. When Irene Adler died the first time, I checked. When Moriarty nearly killed us, I checked. When you tried to quit smoking for the millionth time and practically begged me to let you change your mind, I checked. Yet nothing, absolutely _nothing_ inside that box ever changed. Even right before you did something horrible that I still don't understand.

And while absolutely everything I stand for as a doctor, as your _friend_, said I ought to do something, ought to take the damned box and destroy it, I never did.

I think it was a test and a challenge. For yourself, but also for me.

You could have left it anywhere, but you left it in my room.

While the contents never changed, the amount of dust on the surface did.

This is what I stole before I left to stay with Harry.

I'm telling you this because it is something I find extraordinary and glorious and strange.

I'm telling you this because I'm mad enough to think that sometimes you let me be the second pillar.

And it may be too late, but I'm listening to you again.

* * *

**4: Dead Man's Hand**

My dreams are getting stranger and stranger. I wonder whether this is the result of some incredibly dull days spent delivering 'flu jabs and filling out NHS paperwork. Perhaps my subconscious mind is rebelling against the tedium. If I were you, I'd be shooting the wall...If I still had my gun.

I've begun writing the dreams down because I keep having this horrid looming feeling that I'm forgetting important details. Something true and real seems to be tapping at the window of my mind, but I can't make out its shape.

Some of them are very realistic in tone, but others are complete works of fantasy. I try to drink less tea before bed, drink beer before bed, and drink nothing before bed, but none of it really helps. It's making me tired and restless at the same time.

One night I dream about Irene Adler.

I walk into the living room with a mug of tea and a jar of something suspicious I've found in the refrigerator. I want to ask you why the contents have what I suspect is an arsenical sheen (grey and faintly metallic), and I'm reasonably certain I won't like the answer or its potential implications for our hand blender. Instead of you, I see The Woman.

She's sprawled on the sofa with her feet on the armrest, wrapped in your old blue dressing gown. The sight is inexplicably maddening, much as it was in life. How _dare_ she come in here and treat your things as her own? And besides, she's—

"You're dead," I protest.

She smiles at me with her red, red lips. "So is Sherlock Holmes," she reminds me. "Look at us both."

"Look at what?" I ask, and she pulls a small rubber ball out of her pocket and begins tossing it from hand to hand.

"Never mistake what I say for meaning," she admonishes, and suddenly throws the ball against the wall. It bounces and lands, ever-so-gently, _impossibly,_ in my tea. Somehow the liquid remains placid and undisturbed.

"You're not making sense," I say.

"Whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth," she says, and I know she's quoting your website, _The Science of Deduction._ I can't remember the two preceding statements, and I know I should.

I set my cup down on the table and fish the ball out of it. It is completely dry. "You're not helping," I tell her. "Why aren't you helping?"

"I'm dead, John," she reminds me. "It's _ever_ so boring."

"Then stop," I say.

"Ah, but I can't. You see, I've made a number of delicate arrangements. It would be a shame to ruin everything now."

I bounce the ball against the wall and watch a white line trace itself in the air to mark its path, a bit like a jet trail. I'm not sure why it would do this, so I catch it and throw it again and again. The lines remain.

"Why is it doing this?" I ask her. "What's the trick?" I glance over at the sofa, and she's not there.

Instead, it's you standing beside me, and you intercept the ball mid-bounce with your long fingers and tuck it into your coat pocket. "If I explain it, it doesn't _work_," you tell me. "You were supposed to _observe."_

"I know I can get this, " I say. "Just... Run it by me again?"

"Not enough time," you tell me, and take me by the shoulders, quite roughly. "You're not seeing it, John! _What aren't you seeing?"_

I open my mouth because I suddenly know _exactly what you mean,_ but then I wake up.

As it happens, I really _don't_ know. But I write it all down anyway.

* * *

It's the weekend at last, and I don't have to go into the clinic, so I spend Saturday helping Mrs. Hudson hang new wallpaper in 221C. It's hot and it's messy and it hurts my shoulder, but it's good to feel useful to someone.

On Sunday afternoon, I take her thank-you scones over to my neighbour Bill so we can do tea and television. I like Bill. He doesn't say much, but he's intelligent in a calm and thoughtful sort of a way. Sometimes we just sit without talking and it's almost shocking to me how good it is to feel another human presence in the room.

He reminds me of the cat we had when I was a boy. Muffler was one of two brothers (Mittens was the other), and the smaller and quieter of the two. After Mittens was hit by a car, Muffler would sit bunched on the end of my desk and watch me doing my revisions. He didn't want to be picked up, although Harry was always snatching him up when he least expected it. He just wanted to sit with someone who made no demands on him.

Bill and I have a surprising amount in common: both ex-military, both a bit at loose ends. Both alone. "Almost everything I had apart from my books was bought by someone else," he told me once, when I remarked upon his sparsely furnished flat. "It's better this way. It's comfortable."

I think he has lost someone important and complicated, and that's one of the things we don't talk about. I never mention you at all, and it's so strange to know someone who can see me without also thinking of you. It's as if I've become someone completely different, simply by remaining the person I've always been.

We're watching a special report on the demise of a weapons smuggling ring (in Tibet of all places), and I'm playing my usual internal game of _Were They Something to Do With Moriarty? Is Anyone Actually Doing _**_Anything? _**We hear sirens in the distance, but I dismiss them because it's London; it's ambience.

Quite a lot of sirens, though. Far too many, far too close.

But suddenly it's on the news we're watching: the Wellington Arch has exploded. On a Sunday afternoon.

Time seems to slow down, and I'm aware I'm dropping my cup, but I can't seem to stop it. There's a roaring in my ears, and I feel the kind of glacial calm that I'm aware is actually a response to danger. It's noradrenaline, and nothing new to me.

Over the roaring, there are two things in my head, and the first is _Moriarty._ The second is, _I'm a doctor._

I'm fairly certain I say the second one (or something like it) to Bill, and I'm off running.

I run towards Hyde Park, which is not exactly close, but also not exactly accessible by any other means at this point. Traffic is at a standstill all down Baker Street, the side streets, and even on the A40.

I finally get to the south end of the park, and everything has been cordoned off. None of the police officers or emergency workers look familiar, and no one seems to know what is going on. I try to talk my way in, of course, but it's no good.

Things might have been different once, before I became a bystander. I could help, but I'm not allowed. It chokes me, this not being able to do anything.

The air is thick with grey dust and smoke here. Everywhere else, I'm aware, it's a perfectly pleasant summer day.

_Moriarty_, I repeat to myself, and I turn away towards the Knightsbridge Tube station. As the air gets clearer, so does my head.

If this is Moriarty's doing, I reckon I owe him one already. Now seems as good a time as any, but I don't have my gun and I certainly don't have your brain. I don't even know where he is.

_There's always the British Government, _I think and it is almost, but not quite, worth laughing at.

I no longer have Mycroft's number. He learned not to contact me after I refused to attend your funeral, he asked me where I was, and I said some relatively unforgivable things in response. Afterwards, I deleted his information. So that's no good.

You once summoned the police by firing rounds into the sky outside Irene Adler's house. Summoning Mycroft should be nearly as easy. Even today.

Perhaps especially today.

I have a black felt-tipped pen in my pocket, but no paper. Directly ahead of me is one of those ancient red telephone boxes. If I am extremely lucky, it will be papered with tart cards.

The door is surprisingly difficult to pry open, but adrenaline does the job. As luck would have it, it is absolutely stuffed with cards. For no good reason, I am suddenly seized by indecision.

_Honestly, John. Just _choose_ one._

I select a yellow card with a bosomy brunette offering what appears to be a course of recreational scolding (because it's _yellow_, that's why—it will provide a better contrast). I rip it off the wall and savagely scrawl "MYCROFT HOLMES" on the back in block letters. It only takes me a second to locate a CCTV camera and hold the note in front of it.

But life, as I keep reminding myself, is not a bloody fairy tale.

I wait for an hour. Nothing happens.

"This is completely futile," I say, and make my way home.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes, _say brick walls and plexiglass bus shelters as I pass them. I've been noticing this a lot lately.

* * *

I eat and shower away the dust and I really don't think I'll be able to sleep, but I must have managed to, a bit. I dream the smell of dust and charred bodies and Moriarty saying _I will burn the heart out of you._

The black car arrives at half past six. Anthea waves me into the rear seat without a word, and I am surprised to see Mycroft and an attaché case already in residence. No secret warehouses today, then.

He looks thinner than I've ever seen him. He also looks as tired as I feel. "John," he says. "I've got ten minutes."

Pleasantries don't seem appropriate under the circumstances. "What happened today…It feels like something Jim Moriarty would do. Am I wrong?"

Mycroft looks at me, and I'm half expecting one of his strange little smiles that is not really a smile. Apparently he doesn't have it in him today. "Jim Moriarty is dead," he says. "He has been dead for several months."

I am aware that it's ridiculous to start a fight in a parked car, but something boils to the surface in me, and I can't stop myself. "Do you think maybe, just _maybe_, you might have told me that a _bit earlier? _Any time before now would have been absolutely_ brilliant._"

Anthea looks up from her Blackberry for a second, but Mycroft shakes his head at her. "John, he shot himself the day my brother..." He does us both the favour of dispensing with a verb.

I'm not feeling generous, so I say it for him. "The day he **died**." It comes out of my mouth so easily this time. My therapist would be proud, if I ever told her.

"I can't go into the details," Mycroft says, "But yes. He did."

"Before, or afterwards?"

"Before."

It's unsettling, the way I feel the ghost of your hands on my face, as if you're going to spin me in circles like you did that day I took a photograph of the graffiti and you went a bit mental on me. _Think, John. Because if Moriarty died _before_ me, what I did makes _no sense_. You've missed something important._

The car seems very small indeed. I am aware that smashing my fist into Mycroft Holmes' face will not be expedient. The car door, on the other hand, makes a fantastic substitute.

God, that hurts.

Before he can respond, I say, "There is something else you're not telling me. Did Sherlock know he was dead?"

I know that blank-and-deadly expression. I've seen it a million times on another man's face. I'm practically immune to it by now.

"If Moriarty was already dead, what was the _point?_ Why the hell would he have jumped _anyway?"_

"There was someone else there," Mycroft says. "A colleague."

"For insurance," I suggest very calmly, aware that someone is screaming in another part of my brain. "Is he… Is this person still out there? Was the Arch his doing?"

"We believe it was, yes. Unfortunately, we were unable to apprehend this man before something regrettable occurred."

"Well. That significantly reduces my remaining faith in the British government. _Sir."_

"We have identified him, however." Mycroft opens the attaché case and pulls out an envelope. "It seems he spent quite some time following you around London. Before the incident."

Following _me_.

"There were at least three gunmen. One assigned to you. One assigned to Detective Inspector Lestrade. One, we think, assigned to Mrs. Hudson."

_Stay exactly where you are. Don't move. Keep your eyes fixed on me._

"So you're saying... What are you saying?"

"All accounted for but one. He is ex-military, and we believe him to have been Moriarty's favoured lieutenant." Mycroft looks down at his hand, at the envelope. "His name is Sebastian Moran," he says, as if that should matter.

"Never heard of him."

"John, I think it is only fair to tell you that he may target you again. We have whittled away at the organisation, and this man is the final piece. We're quite certain he's aware we want him."

"Well, it's awfully sporting of you to warn me," I say. "Are we finished here?"

"Not entirely." He opens the envelope and removes a photograph. "Please take this," he says, pressing it into my hand. "We'll be watching, but if you see him, don't hesitate to contact me immediately. Perhaps less theatrically this time."

"You'll have to give me your number," I say. "I'm afraid I've deleted it."

He does, and I wrench the car door open and step out onto the street. Anthea stops me and hands me a suspiciously heavy parcel. The weight is familiar and comforting.

The car pulls away from the kerb, and I glance at the photograph in my hand.

The best lies are the ones you don't have to tell. Because I realise I _do_ know Sebastian Moran, after all.

"Mycroft Holmes," I whisper once I'm back in the flat, the SIG beside me on the sofa like an old friend, "You have no idea what you have just done. I really don't think you do."

Thanks to him, I know two important things, and they go singing through my head with certainty and elation and despair.

I know Sebastian Moran because he could have been my friend. He very nearly was, was Bill Richardson.

The other thing is better, and it is also worse. I am going to try very hard indeed not to do something stupid, because it would be such a terrible waste of what has already been done.

What _you_ did, Sherlock.

I might have missed some important details, and I probably have. I also know the sort of twisted games Jim Moriarty liked to play.

I think he wanted the final word, and he would have loved nothing better than making you say it for him.

If he was dead, and if you _knew_ he was dead, I think I do know why you did what you did that day.

I'm thinking, perhaps, you did it for me.

* * *

**5: Friends Are What Keep You Safe**

I should not be doing what I am doing. I know the whereabouts of a man who has, in all likelihood, caused the deaths of at least twenty-five people, and I am deliberately keeping that information to myself. I should not take the return of my gun as license to settle the matter myself. I should not, but I do.

I don't see him until two weeks have passed. Plenty of time to consider my actions and the danger of seeing him, of making myself an available target. It's entirely possible, no _probable, _that I am being watched by Mycroft's people. I should be.

I'm coming home from work one day, and there he is, Sebastian Moran, padding towards his flat from the opposite end of Baker Street.

"John," he says, his voice soft as always, the ghost of a crooked smile on his face. "Haven't seen you for a while."

I don't know what I _should_ do, but it is almost certainly not this. I nod. I smile. I am completely calm.

"I was just going to put some tea on," he says. "Care to join me?"

"I think I will," I say, my voice as steady as surgery. It's a dangerous game with the SIG tucked in my bag beneath the remains of my lunch and a Daily Mail. I can feel his true name burning in my mind.

This should not be easy, but it is.

We enter his flat, and I sit down at his kitchen table. He makes us tea, and I am acutely aware of my bag on the floor beside me, of the gun. I am so very calm. He may try to kill me. It could be today.

It seems that it is not.

"I've been a bit worried about you," he says, his back to me, his movements unhurried.

This is not, by any stretch, something I'd expect him to say. "Worried? What do you mean?"

He hands me my tea and sits down in the chair against the wall. "Sorry. It's not a thing we talk about. " He wraps his fingers around his cup, then pulls them back from the heat. "Afghanistan."

"No," I agree.

"It can't be easy for you, seeing a thing like that. Knowing the extent of the damage."

"What isn't easy," I say sharply, "is not being able to help."

"I'm sorry," he says. "Of course."

"Since I've been back in London, I... I had a friend I used to go to crime scenes with. To help the police."

"I know," he says, unblinking. "What you've done is admirable."

I find this increasingly surreal. "Well, a great many things have changed."

He studies me with his strange cat's eyes. "And they won't let you help now."

"No."

"That makes it all the more difficult."

"Is it difficult for _you?"_ I ask. _Do you know that I know?_

"Yes." He studies his tea. "It is a terrible thing to see beauty destroyed."

"The_ Arch?_ What about the people?"

"I was _talking_ about the people," he says. He meets my eyes again, and I can't tell whether he's lying. "I've done things like this myself, you know. You put people back together. It has been my... duty to take them apart."

And what, really, am I to say to this?

This isn't the first time I've had tea with a murderer, but it is certainly the strangest. I wonder if he would tell me the truth if I asked him. _He's had every opportunity to kill me,_ I think, _and he hasn't. Why?_

For that matter, it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to have shot him while he made the tea, but I didn't. For all that I know him to be an associate of Moriarty's, for all that I've been told he has been stalking me for months, for all that he may very well have blown up the Arch himself, I still have to be certain.

The silence is no longer comfortable. It can't be, anymore.

It's a relief when my phone pulses against my leg. "Sorry," I say, and shift to pull it out of my pocket. Sebastian Moran nods, and sips his tea.

It's Greg Lestrade.

_You around? I stopped by to see you and Mrs. Hudson thought you should be home by now. I can only eat so many biscuits._

_I'm just down the street. Hold on. I'll be there soon_, I reply.

"Sorry to do this," I say, "but someone is waiting for me. I'd better go."

"Not to worry," he says. "I've got a game in a bit."

_What kind of game?_ I think, and retrieve my bag, careful not to betray its contents.

"See you," he says. And in that flat, whispered voice of his that makes inflection so difficult to judge, "Take care of yourself."

* * *

Greg and Mrs. Hudson are in the living room when I arrive. "Good to see you," I say. "I was just visiting a friend." _And when I say _friend...

"That nice Bill Richardson," Mrs. Hudson says.

"How's the Yard?" I sit in your chair. It still feels wrong.

"John," Greg says. "I came by because I wanted to tell you something."

Another warning about Sebastian Moran?

"About Sherlock. And the investigation."

"Oh dear," Mrs. Hudson says, and pours me a cup of tea, unasked.

I accept the cup. "What is it?"

"Things are coming out now. That's why I've been reinstated. I mean, it's pretty clear that the Richard Brook thing was a complete load of bollocks."

"Of course it was."

Mrs. Hudson, hovering despite her hip, pats me on the shoulder. She smells of lemon.

"Thing is, John, we've got something new."

My phone chooses this moment to go off again. I ignore it. I lean forward in my seat. "What?"

Greg looks apologetic. "We've... Someone sent us Sherlock's phone."

"What, _now?"_

"It seems it wasn't with him when he...He must have left it behind, on the roof."

"Okay."

Greg is not a man I'm used to seeing stumble over words. This cannot be easy for him. Still, I want to shake him by the shoulders. _Get on with it._

"There's a recording. It's Sherlock and Moriarty."

I am distantly aware of Mrs. Hudson sitting down at this.

"Their conversation makes it quite clear that Moriarty was everything we had believed him to be, that Sherlock believed him to be. We can use it to clear his name, John."

When I say nothing, Greg looks at me, anxious. "It's also apparent that Moriarty is dead."

"I know _that._ Mycroft told me. Hell, he probably sent you the phone. Although he didn't tell me that he had it when we talked."

"Ah." Greg swallows, awkwardly. "So, you know that... You know why Sherlock felt he had to do it."

"Because of us," I say. "He wanted to protect us."

It's what the funeral should have been, but wasn't. It is complicated by having to explain things to Mrs. Hudson. I let Greg talk.

I wonder if they'd let me hear the recording. I wonder if I could stand to.

My mind is racing, but at the same time, everything is terribly still. Like a dream, right before the bad things begin. _Like a dream,_ I think, watching Mrs. Hudson dropping sugar lumps in her tea. They seem to fall so slowly.

Or a_ magic trick._

"Oh god." And I must say it aloud, because they both turn to look at me.

I wave them away. What I'm thinking is completely mad.

_So it's probably true._

Eventually they leave me alone. It's getting late.

My head is awash in rubber balls and invisible lines and a distant memory of a teacher that liked to draw stick figures falling out of lifts and off of buildings. Physics and trigonometry were not my best subjects. I was too preoccupied with girls.

There is _still_ something I'm not seeing, but I am suddenly, insanely certain of one thing: There's a strong possibility that you are _not dead._

I don't sleep. I can't.

Periodically my phone grinds against the carpet where I've thrown it. It's Mycroft calling. I don't answer.

* * *

I am not pleased when I come down the next morning and find two men in suits in my living room. One of them is Mycroft Holmes.

"Ah, John." He manages to invest my name with a great deal of exasperation. "It appears you've been rather dishonest with me."

"Likewise," I say. "I suppose _you're_ talking about Sebastian Moran."

"Well, indeed," he says. "You neglected to mention your friendship."

"If by that you mean I know him and he hasn't killed me yet, then yes. I can't exactly call us friends, under the circumstances."

"You also neglected to inform me that he is living across the street," he continues. "That was rather irresponsible of you, surely."

"And _you_ didn't tell me about what was recorded on your brother's phone," I counter. "Why not?"

I've got other things I'd rather be doing, but instead we talk about my neighbour. Much to my annoyance, it appears that Mycroft is unwilling to discuss the phone. Worse yet, I have been saddled with a government-issued minder. "For a few days," Mycroft assures me briskly. "Until the question of Moran has been resolved."

It is agreed that although the agent will be watching me, we will _both_ be watching the flat across the street. For what, precisely, it is hard to say.

"I really don't know that he _does_ intend to kill me," I say, for what seems like the hundredth time. The additional information I've been given only makes the man more unpredictable. There are things I am not allowed to know, but I think I can fill in the blanks well enough. We didn't fight the same war. That much is clear.

"What he plans to do with you rather depends upon what he decides you are," Mycroft says, cryptically.

* * *

I tell the agent - called Jeff, apparently; this somewhat spoils the remaining glamour of MI5 - he'll be sleeping on the sofa. This, in turn, necessitates some brutal honesty with Mrs. Hudson. She is both gutted and indignant to hear that Bill Richardson as she knew him does not exist, but seems to find Jeff's presence enough of a novelty to make up for it. He is a tall young Londoner of West Indian descent. I suspect she finds him dashing, and have to beg her not to mention him to Mrs. Turner.

It is a relief to get to work (mercifully Jeff-less, but in a black car that magically appears as I step outside the door) and have some time to myself. Other than the patients, that is. It's a slow day, though, so I have plenty of time to think around the edges.

As the afternoon winds on, I give in to my impulse to call Molly Hooper.

Ah, Molly. I should have talked to her the moment I remembered Bart's didn't have an A&E. The moment I realised it made no sense for an emergency response team to conveniently appear outside Pathology at exactly the right moment. If you were going to do something insane and complicated like faking your own death, and I couldn't help you, couldn't even _know_what you were doing, why _not_ Molly?

It takes me a while to think of a good way to start this conversation. "Molly! I think you helped my best friend fake his death. If you did, you have some serious explaining to do," probably isn't the best opener.

I decide to go with, "Molly, I've been talking to Greg Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes and now I need to talk to you."

I do not expect her to answer that with,"Oh, thank God."

When this is followed with, "I'm incredibly worried about him," it takes me a moment to identify the "him" she means. It's ridiculous, really.

"What do you mean?"

"Has he spoken to you? Because usually he—I mean, for a while he was talking to me quite a lot, but maybe he's not now, because of you. I mean, if I asked how things were, he'd answer, anyway, but now he won't talk to me," she gets out in a rush.

"Back up a moment." I know there will be no returning to pretence when I add, "When you say 'he,' you mean—"

"Sherlock, of course," she blurts.

_"Not dead, then," _I say quietly.

"No! I hope not." There is a pause, followed by audible panic. "Oh no. You didn't... He didn't tell you!"

"That he faked his own death? More or less in _front of me?_ No. He did not."

She exhales into the receiver. "He's going to kill me."

"Not if I kill him first," I say. What I am feeling defies description. It is beginning to resemble anger to some extent. I suspect there's relief hidden in there somewhere, but I don't have time for it yet.

"Well, he _should_ have told you," she says, and adds in a surprisingly steely tone, "It's too late now, so you might as well know the rest. Because it isn't over yet, and I do think he's in trouble."

"To be fair," I say, gentle for her sake, if not entirely for yours, "I _did_ know about Moriarty and the assassins. And I truly was beginning to suspect he wasn't...dead. That's why I wanted to talk to you, Molly."

She's quiet. I hear a faint clinking sound in the background. I imagine her methodically tidying her instrument tray as she tidies her thoughts.

"All right, " she says at last. "It's... It's just a feeling. So maybe it's silly of me."

"Molly," I say, as someone ought to have done long ago, but possibly never has, "I'm sure it isn't silly. Clearly _he _trusted your judgement enormously. I'm inclined to respect that."

"Thanks. It's just that, he didn't have anyone much to talk to anymore. So sometimes he talked to me. I mean, he stayed with me until he was well enough to travel, but even after that we'd talk from time to time."

_Well enough,_ I file away for future examination. Broken bones? Worse? Probably. Time enough to ferret out the details later. "But he stopped."

"And he sounded a bit odd, before that. Even for him, I mean. He'd send me texts with strange questions at odd hours."

I laugh a little. "He did that all the time. With me, anyway."

"Yes. It must have been...difficult for him. So, yes. I knew he was looking for someone. Someone he couldn't tell me anything about, except that maybe he plays cards? A gambler, I think. He kept going on about poker and blackjack for days, and then he just...stopped."

"And you were worried, then," I prompt, thinking _and you probably should be..._

_"_Yes. And then his brother came to see me."

"Of course he did. That must have been frightening."

"He asked me if I knew where Sherlock was. I know they don't get on very well, but they've had to, the last—"

**"Year,"** I interject harshly. "Yes. Sorry."

"He really misses you," she says softly. "I know he does."

"Yeah," I get out eventually. I can't quite manage to add, "I miss him, too."

I hate it that I know exactly who you are hunting, and I don't know whether you've found him yet. Sebastian Moran is almost certainly after _you,_ and now I think I know why I've been left untouched.

I am the goat staked out on the edge of the village, the helpless lure displayed to draw you towards the waiting guns.

_So maybe there's still hope._

"Thank you, Molly, " I say. "I have to go now. But thank you. You're...a good friend."

I stuff my feelings away—I don't even know what they _are,_ really—and wrack my brain for anything useful. What do I know?

Sherlock is alive. _Deal with that later._

Mycroft knows this (of course he does), and he also knows about Sebastian Moran.

It stands to reason that Sherlock is looking for Moran, and that Moran is searching for, or in all likelihood, simply _waiting for_ him.

Sherlock is impatient. He has slipped the leash.

Mycroft is watching Baker Street. He has sent an agent to my flat. He's being somewhat unobtrusive, but he's on the alert for something. Something he hasn't bothered to mention to me, as usual.

_I have to get home._

* * *

When I arrive (black car again—it's a bit weird), Jeff and Mrs. Hudson are in the living room. Another man I've never seen before is standing to one side of the street-facing window, assembling a rifle with a scope.

"This is Alan," Mrs. Hudson says, by way of introduction. Alan is older and more practically dressed than Jeff is. I suspect he'd be ginger if his head wasn't shaved.

"Looks serious," I say, surprised they've let her remain in the room.

Jeff tells us that Sebastian Moran has a visitor. "Some fair-haired bloke," he says. "Probably nothing important."

_So not you._ Or it might be; I don't know. I find myself drawn towards the window, like a moth to a torch. Alan is, understandably, keeping out of sight around the corner. Eventually, I am rewarded by the sight of two more men, who I have never seen before, arriving at Sebastian Moran's flat. It's getting dark.

"Card game," Alan announces, his eye still glued to the scope. I want to ask if I can have a look, but I know better than to try.

Jeff receives a telephone call that consists of a number of clipped "Yes sirs" on his end. He has a brief, whispered conversation with Alan after this.

"What's going on?" I ask.

Jeff shrugs apologetically. "We're just watching," he says. I suspect he's leaving something out.

"We don't have any food in for dinner," I announce. "I'm starved." Mrs. Hudson, torn between her desire to be helpful and her eroding insistence that she is not my housekeeper, makes noises about cooking something, but I won't hear of it. "I'll just go out and get us something," I suggest, but am in turn shot down by Jeff. Apparently, I am not allowed to leave the flat.

After some discussion, we agree that I can have food delivered, so I compile an order of Chinese for myself, Mrs. Hudson, and the two agents. We agree that I will collect it downstairs when it arrives, and that Jeff will not need to accompany me because I am a responsible adult. _With a gun, _I add to myself.

The next forty-five minutes are hell.

I have a lot to think about, it's true. Where you've been. What you've been doing. Why you didn't tell me anything. Why you couldn't tell me anything. What I will say to you if, no, _when_ I see you again.

"Bit of a fight," Alan announces, after a small eternity. "Ah. He's got a gun."

"Of course he has," I say. "By all accounts, he's got an arsenal." I've steered Mrs. Hudson far away from the window, as it seems like the reasonable thing to do. As ever, I must remind myself that not only has she put up with us, various gunmen, and constant visits from the police, but she has also been married to a murderer. She'll be fine.

Jeff is on the telephone again, explaining the situation. I can only assume with all the "sirs" that it's Mycroft again.

"They're going," Alan says, a few minutes later.

"Who's going?" Jeff asks. He is still on his headset.

"Just the two that arrived together," Alan responds. "Not...Not the first one. They're drinking now."

Around this time, the food arrives. Painfully aware of the service pistol tucked beneath my jacket, I pull out a couple of twenty pound notes and make my way down the stairs.

"Thanks," I say, handing them to the young man with the carrier bags. I should go back inside immediately, but I don't.

No, instead I look across the street, as we have been doing all evening.

I see a man silhouetted against the window. He must be leaning against the glass.

It's not Sebastian Moran.

With absurd care, I set the carrier bags down on the steps and drift out into the street. I hear feet on the stairs, on the pavement behind me. I hear Jeff hissing my name, urgently. I don't respond.

It's not Sebastian Moran at all. It's _you._

Your hair may be strange, and your clothes are all wrong, but I'd know that profile anywhere. And I don't have time to think about it, much, because he's there too, now. Sebastian Moran is there too, and he's got a gun pointed at your head.

But he isn't looking out the window. He doesn't see me.

_Don't look,_ I think. _You _don't_ see me._ The SIG is in my hand, heavy and familiar.

The footsteps behind me have stopped. I can hear Jeff breathing. I can hear my own heart pounding in my chest.

I can practically _feel_ you sliding down the glass, so silently. Almost invisibly from where I'm standing (fifteen feet away, perhaps), but I see it. I see everything.

When he smiles, I know there is no more time.

I fire.


	4. Silently, Invisibly

**Silently, Invisibly**

* * *

**1: But it's Not**

In the stillness after the kick of the pistol, I entertain a brief feeling that things might be all right now.

I should know better.

The first thing I hear, small and distinct despite the ringing of my ears, is Jeff saying, "Fuck."

The first thing I see is the empty space outlined by the window frame. The bullet hole is surprisingly neat, surrounded by radiating cracks in the glass that catch the light inside like prisms.

_Tell me I didn't miss_.

Jeff has longer legs. He makes it to the door before I do. There is a moment of awkward silence when we stand on the steps, looking at each other, before he pushes it open, standing to one side as he does so. I can hear the tinny, distant sound of someone talking loudly into his earpiece.

As we step inside the flat, I see a gun on the floor. Moran's of course, but it looks like mine.

"They're both down," Jeff says.

Sebastian Moran is closest to the door. He is lying twisted on his side, left hand outstretched. It is immediately clear that my bullet caught him squarely in the temple. He will not be getting up again.

The next thing I see is Sherlock, crumpled against the wall under the window, his hair also dark with blood.

_This is why you don't shoot a man who has a gun to someone's head,_ I think, feeling sick.

His eyes are closed, but I still feel a cold needle of fear as I touch his hand. It's the blood masking his face; it reminds me of the last time I saw him. I note the differences: clothing (commonplace, faded), his hair (fair, short, spiking with blood), but his still, expressionless face is the same.

I remember to breathe again when I realise he has a pulse, albeit a slow one. I push his hair away and see that the bleeding is due to a minor scalp wound. He must have hit the edge of the windowsill when he fell; the dusting of glass fragments from the window is too fine to have done him any harm.

Jeff brings me a dish towel, and I apply pressure to the cut. With the other hand, I lift one of Sherlock's eyelids, startled by the unexpected brown of his iris. Contact lenses. I could swear his pupil contracts slightly against the light, but I don't think he's properly conscious. He doesn't see me.

In the day I've been considering his return, this was never one of the options. We were not supposed to meet in this airless calm with blood on my hands. It's the silence that disturbs me.

Alan arrives next and takes in the carnage. "He okay?"

"He's hit his head. I'm not sure what else is wrong yet."

Alan nods. "Moran didn't touch him. He just sort of...fell."

Jeff is crouched down beside Moran's body. If this were a proper crime scene, everyone would be complaining about the evidence. "No, he wasn't shot," I hear him saying into his headset, followed by "Moran is dead. Definitely dead."

Sherlock still doesn't respond properly when I check his other eye. Some sort of sedative? Does that even make sense?

"Did you see him eat or drink anything?" I ask Alan. "While you were watching them?"

"Just that," he says, nodding to a glass on the table. It contains a couple of ice cubes that have melted down to slivers floating in about half an inch of water. There's an empty whiskey bottle by the sink.

I can smell a faint trace of whiskey on Sherlock's breath, but it's mostly overpowered by the reek of stale cigarettes. I've never known him to drink much; his vices have always tended toward the stimulant end of the spectrum.

"Hm. Right. Can one of you give me a hand here?" Sherlock appears to have lost a good stone in weight since I've seen him last, but he's still surprisingly heavy. I need Alan's assistance to lean him against the wall in a more upright position. He makes an odd hum of protest when we move him. If I wasn't pressing my hand to his head, he'd fall forward.

Jeff is still on the phone, but emerges long enough to mouth "He's on his way" to Alan.

"Who, Mycroft?" I ask.

Jeff rolls his eyes slightly in a gesture I take to mean "Yes."

The bleeding has nearly stopped under pressure. I know I've got some butterfly sutures and antiseptic in the flat across the street. It's ridiculous, but I don't want to leave him alone while I get them. "Alan, can you prop him up while I find my kit? I'll only be a moment."

The two agents look at me, and then at each other. I have no idea what Mycroft has said to them about me, but apparently, this will be fine. Even though I've just shot a man. Possibly because I did. I quickly show them how to continue pressure to the wound, and bolt across the street.

Baker Street is quiet. No cars, no people. Something seems odd about that, but it's not important.

* * *

Somehow, I've managed to forget that my hands and jacket are all sticky with Sherlock's blood. Mrs. Hudson looks aghast when she intercepts me on the stairs.

"Sorry, I have to get something—it's complicated—we're fine!" I call, sounding a bit manic. I bound past her into the flat and scrub my hands—probably not long enough—and grab the medical kit I keep in one of the kitchen cupboards.

"John! Is he dead?" she calls, as I surge past her again.

"Yes. I'm afraid so. Sherlock isn't, though."

"Isn't what, dear?"

"Dead!"

I really shouldn't be surprised when she follows me out across the street after that.

* * *

Sebastian Moran's flat seems positively tiny once I've returned and we are joined by Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, and Anthea. Their voices are quiet. I tune them out easily and fall into what I know best.

I am busy sponging blood off of Sherlock's face and applying the antiseptic when he thrashes convulsively against the wall and comes dangerously close to hitting the back of his head. "Sherlock! It's me," I say, steadying him with my hand at the base of his neck. "It's John."

His eyes are open now, but they are looking past me at someone who isn't there. "Don't," he says. _"Don't."_

"Don't what?" I say. "I'm sorry. I know this stings a bit."

"He's going to kill you. I have to stop him," he says, his voice spiralling upwards as he claws at me with surprising strength.

"Sherlock! Sebastian Moran is dead. I shot him." I hold his wrists, trying to be gentle about it, and lean forward until our foreheads nearly touch. "Look at me."

He exhales, shuddering, eyes unfocussed. "I can't see you," he says, more quietly this time. "Why can't I see you?"

Mycroft, who has been conferring with Jeff and Alan over the body since his arrival, chooses this moment to join us. "I think Sherlock's been drugged," I tell him.

Mycroft plucks at the knees of his trousers and folds himself down onto the floor beside us like an enormous spider. It's extremely disconcerting. "What with?" he asks me, gently taking Sherlock's hands so I can apply the plasters to his head.

"I'm not sure," I say. Sherlock has closed his eyes again and appears to be twitching his fingers in time to a song that only he can hear. "The glass he drank from is over there."

"I can hear you, but I can't see you," Sherlock says abruptly, in what is very nearly a conversational tone.

"What do you remember?" I ask him.

He does not answer in words. He hums a fragment of something I don't recognise.

"Mrs. Hudson, would you be so kind...?" Mycroft asks, nodding towards the glass on the table.

She hands it to him, and pulls one of the kitchen chairs over towards us. "My hip, you know."

Mycroft sniffs at the glass and passes it to me. Gingerly, I touch one finger to the liquid and then brush my tongue against it. It tastes very weakly of whiskey, and nothing more. I shrug. "Could be any number of things," I say. "Might be worth a look in his bins."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think my dear brother was drunk," Mycroft says, dryly.

"Sherlock," I say, slowly and loudly. "I think you have been drugged. Can you tell me what you're feeling?"

"Tired," he says. "Unbearably tired." He opens his eyes again and makes a face. I can't tell whether it's because he sees Mycroft, or because he can't. "Unstable," he adds, as his head jerks forward.

Mycroft frowns and suddenly catches his brother's left hand again. I watch as he rolls the bloodstained cotton shirt sleeve past his elbow. There, in the crook of his arm, is a little red pinpoint. More than one, I note, as I lean forward to examine it. There is also some faint and regrettably characteristic bruising. "What was it?" he asks, sharply.

"What was..._what?"_ Sherlock says, snatching his arm away irritably, eyes screwed shut.

"What have you been injecting?"

I find my own arm stiffening protectively around my patient. "I really don't think that approach is going to help," I hiss at Mycroft, just as Jeff appears with a piece of foil in his hand.

"What is it?" I ask.

"It was in Moran's pocket," he says, giving me what is clearly the remains of a pharmaceutical blister pack.

"Rohypnol. Two milligrams," I read, slightly relieved. "Yeah. That'd do it."

Mrs. Hudson leans forward. "They give it to young girls in clubs," she says sagely. "I've seen it on telly."

"Sir," Jeff says, almost pleadingly, and Mycroft unfurls himself into a standing position with a sigh.

"We'll be discussing this later," he tells me.

Sherlock surprises me by sagging heavily onto my shoulder without warning. "This is wretched."

"Well, the worst of it will be over in a few hours," I tell him. "It's probably best if you can manage to sleep it off. You really do look awful."

I think he might see me when he opens his eyes this time. "I know," he says, and laughs a little.

* * *

Sebastian Moran is gone now. I realise I didn't even see them take him away. I feel a bit strange about that.

Sherlock's hair is still crisp with dried blood in places, but Mrs. Hudson and I help him to remove the contact lenses after he complains that his eyes feel like they're full of sand. Apparently this attempt at lucidity is draining. He manages to fall asleep with the pointiest bits of his face poking into my clavicle. I'd like to think he knows who I am, but I'm not sure that he does. It doesn't seem to matter.

Mycroft and I have a muted discussion that ends in me agreeing to look after his brother for the rest of the night, but accomplishes little else. I have lost circulation to my arm by this point, so I wake Sherlock up enough to get him off the floor. I don't mention the needle marks, the lies, or anything else of importance. It takes three of us to get him across the street, up the stairs, and onto the sofa.

The Chinese take-away is still on the steps exactly where I left it. It's cold, but we eat it anyway.

* * *

**2: Packet Loss**

I wake because it is far too warm. I shift against the worn leather of the sofa, searching for a cool surface to rest my face upon. It is dark, but there is enough moonlight to illuminate the angles of a figure folded into the armchair beside me.

_John. So none of this is real._

I listen to the faint, familiar sounds of his breath until sleep claims me again.

* * *

I wake with a start, convinced I've heard a gunshot in the street outside. I stumble to the window on dyskinetic limbs, but all is as calm and still as London could ever be. I cannot say I feel the same. I sink back down and work to impose order upon my arrhythmic heart. It's dark, but I can see the familiar outlines of the furniture, the mantle, and the door. I am alone. This is 221B, but 221B as if I had never existed in it.

_If I never existed, then perhaps you never existed._

Which of these things is worse? I close my eyes and fall headlong into a sea of progressive tessellations, until there is nothing but nothing.

* * *

I wake in a cold sweat, in a spinning room. My throat is raw. I am falling.

_Sherlock_, he says. There's his hand on my forehead, warm and dry.

_I know you're not here, _I say. _You can't be. I'm dead._

_You're not dead, _he says. _I am here. You are safe. You are home._

I am bundled together, held down, compressed neatly into myself.

A hand on my face. A weight on my chest. A voice: _You're not dead._

This is a dream.

* * *

I wake into sharp-edged daylight, into street sounds, into chaos. I am in 221B, which is not possible, because I am still dead.

Am I dreaming? No: I am in pain. My head, and to some extent, my neck. Something else. Nausea?

My subconscious is inventive, but not, I think, quite this accurate, this specific. The pounding in my head, the dryness of my throat, and the outright _violence_ of the light streaming in the window are all strong arguments for reality. I am lying on the sofa, wrapped in an unfamiliar blue wool blanket.

I poke at the edges of memory, and come up blank. I wonder what I've done.

I scan the room as best I can without moving my head. Certain remembered objects are missing. The things that were most, well, _mine._

They would be. I've been dead for a year. Necessarily dead; _expediently_ dead. I should not be here, of all places, because there is something I have to accomplish first.

Unless I already have. Have I?

What was yesterday?

_Sebastian Moran._

_Sebastian Moran. Bangalore. Bangalore what? Something. Afghanistan. Iraq. Bosnia? No. Iran? Tigers. The Tyger. Moriarty. Tiger. London Zoo. Photograph. Old boots. Scar. Rifle. Kitchen table. Twenty-one. Friendly fire. PE4. Wellington Arch. Mycroft knows. John does not. John—_

"Sherlock?"

_—is—_

"Sherlock!"

_—here._

John is standing in front of me with a glass of water in his hands. "You're awake. Good."

There must be something I can say that won't betray me. I could say nothing.

"How do you feel?" he asks.

How _should_ I feel? I cannot possibly know how to feel until I know what I've_ done._

"You've slept for about twelve hours," he continues. "Not surprising, really."

"Why isn't it surprising?" I ask. My voice sounds dissonant. Too loud.

"Are you asking because you don't know?" he says, holding out the water.

"It's not likely I'd ask if I _did," _I say. The words sound more savage than I intended them to be.

He looks at the water. "Do you remember coming here?"

"No."

"Ah," he says. "What about the... You hit your head. Do you remember that?"

"No."

I take the water, finally, from his hand. I don't drink it. It is something to hold. It is real.

"Sherlock?" he asks.

"What."

"Do you remember what happened before that?"

What _is_ the last thing I remember?

"Do you remember the card game? There was an argument?" My blankness is apparent. He sighs. "What about Sebastian Moran?"

"I - I don't know. I can't _think."_

"He's dead."

Oh. That's why I'm allowed to be alive again.

"Do you seriously not remember any of this?"

"Apparently not."

John looks at the carpet. He hasn't met my eyes once as we've been talking. _What have I done?_

"Okay, well... I suppose that makes sense. It does." John settles on the chair next to me and scrubs his hand through his hair. "Drink your water. You need it."

"Tell me what happened." I inch up the armrest, enough to handle the glass with something approaching competence. I wish I hadn't. The water is good, but the slightest movement makes me feel unmoored.

He frowns. "Are you going to be sick?"

"No."

"Good." He knots his fingers together.

I wish he would look at me. I _need_ him to, because I have absolutely no idea what he is thinking.

"I shot him," he says at last. "He was going to kill you." He very nearly meets my eyes, but then he looks away again. "It was all a bit unexpected, considering you were supposed to be dead."

This, then, is the bad thing? Of course it is.

"He poured you a glass of Rohypnol. That's why you don't remember."

Oh.

"Your brother thought you should go to hospital," he continues. "I didn't think you'd want that."

"I don't."

"I know." He takes the water glass from me. "Maybe you should, though."

"It's only a sedative."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?" _Why won't you look at me?_

"Give me your hand," he says, snapping his fingers at me.

I hold it out to him, trembling more than I'd expect.

He grips my hand with surprising force, pulling me forward into vertigo. It's alarming.

"What are you—"

He shoves back my sleeve with rough fingers and jabs at the broken skin over my median cubital vein. "This. _This_ is what I mean."

Now he does look at me, and I wish I were dead all over again.

* * *

**3: Ignorance without the bliss**

I shouldn't have done it.

He jerks away from me as if he's been slapped—as if _I've_ slapped him. We stare at each other in shocked silence for a second. "Ah," he says at last, apparently confirming something. His face is expressionless as he turns it into the back of the sofa. His cervical vertebrae look as if they're ready to poke through his skin.

I very nearly put my hand on his shoulder, but the comforting gesture that came to me so easily the night before is impossible now. He's something I don't recognise, and I fear that if I touch him, my fingers will leave bruises. I will tear him apart looking for answers and proof. I need him to explain what he's done. I want to be mistaken about the drugs and right about the rest.

This man is my friend. He thought he had to kill himself to protect me, and I have just killed a man to protect him. I have missed him and hated him and mourned him all at the same time. I've been talking to him constantly for a year, and now that he's finally here to listen, I find I don't know what to say. We had never apologised to each other much in the past, and I certainly don't know how to begin it now.

If he had breezed in, collar turned up and giddy with his own brilliance because everything was sorted, I suppose I could have hit him. Later, after much explanation, things would have been okay. He'd push himself right back into my life, and I'd let him. Instead, he's damaged and blunted and sick. _I'm_ the one buzzing with nervous energy and the need to prove that what I've done was right. I should have come clean about Sebastian Moran, but I didn't; not soon enough. What I did was hugely irresponsible, and it could have killed Sherlock, too. _I_ could have.

It is horrible to see him broken.

It is worse to know we might both be.

* * *

I'm doing the washing up when he stumbles into the toilet. Not long after this, I hear him being sick. I knock on the door but he ignores me, even when I say his name. When he starts running the bath, I walk away. He's burned through most of the sedative by now and I am reasonably confident he won't complicate the situation by falling on the tile and cracking his skull.

Last night, I called Molly and told her he'd been found. It occurs to me that if there's a scheme for telling the rest of the world that he's alive, I don't know what it is. I imagine telling anyone, even Greg, and it's impossible. I feel certain it wasn't supposed to happen this way.

He needs fresh clothing, and he needs to eat. He's so thin he can easily fit into my things, for all that he's got half a foot on me in height. I leave a pair of pyjama trousers and a shirt folded outside the door. I can make him some toast when he emerges, but I'm not sure he'll eat it or even keep it down if he does.

Sherlock's room is nearly empty, reduced to furniture and dust . Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft stripped it all away while I was in Swindon with Harry. I have no idea where all his things have gone. Now that I know Mycroft was in on the secret, I can only assume he's got it all waiting somewhere. I will have to ask him about that. Today.

He should sleep in a proper bed tonight. That, at least, is still here, and I'll have to beg some sheets off Mrs. Hudson; mine are the wrong size. I'll need to have someone stay with him while I do a shop later. I'll need to call off work tomorrow. I'll need to think about how best to manage a drug addict who is legally dead and my best friend and also quite possibly a complete stranger now.

The fifth time I walk by the door, I hear a faint splash and he says,"I'm sorry. Did you need something?"

"No. Just...checking."

I think I hear him sigh. I'm not sure. "I'm not going to drown in the bath. Although I'm aware that might make things less complicated under the circumstances."

An ill-advised attempt at humour? Melodrama? It's hard to tell through a closed door, so I respond with "I'm going down to get some sheets from Mrs. Hudson for your bed. I've put some clean clothes outside the door."

"You're very kind."

_And you sound like an etiquette guide._ _Who the fuck _are_ you?_ "Do you need some water?"

"I'm immersed in it, John."

"Fine. If you need to use my things—my razor, anything—that's fine. I'll be back in a bit."

If he thanks me, I'm already gone.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson is delighted to see me. She's got one of her most purple dresses on, possibly in celebration. On the whole, she has adjusted to Sherlock's resurrection with uncanny ease. I wonder if endless viewings of _Coronation Street_ have desensitised her to the impossible. Or perhaps it's just part and parcel of being our landlady.

"John! I wanted to give you boys some time," she says, and pulls me into her kitchen before I can get out a word. "But if he's up, I've made you some soup. I know you haven't had time to get anything in."

"No, I haven't. Thank you."

"How's his head, dear?"

"Better, I think. Not great. I left him in the bath."

She purses her lips and says, ever-so-gently, "Have you forgiven him?"

_Not our housekeeper, but possibly our mum,_ I think. "I'm working at it."

"He's a trial at times, but he's got a good heart. He's very fond of you, dear. It must have been just as hard on him, being away."

"I think he had other things to occupy him, Mrs. H." _Where to get his next hit of charlie, for one,_ I add silently, uncharitably.

* * *

Sherlock has emerged, scrubbed, shaven, and looking somewhat peculiar in tartan pyjama bottoms and my old RAMC shirt. He'd look odd in any case. The skin under his eyes is dark, and his hair is lighter than mine and somewhat spiked now that it's clean. He's pale, but that's nothing new. If anything, the new hair colour makes him look sallow. He's in his chair, sitting like any ordinary person might do.

"How's the scalp wound?" I ask him, trying not to look overtly disapproving. "You should have kept that dry."

"It's fine."

"Sherlock, I've brought you some soup, love," Mrs. Hudson says. "I saw you last night, but you won't remember." She slips around me and into the kitchen with it.

My once-and-current flatmate and I are left looking at anything but each other. I feel like I'm in a nature documentary. At any moment, I expect David Attenborough to start describing our discomfort in terms of territorial dispute. Is eye contact a threat display we're avoiding? I'd give anything for a lion shredding a wildebeest over the rug instead.

Mrs. Hudson returns with blessed rapidity. She sails over to Sherlock and kisses his cheek. He lets her. He even smiles a little. It's a stiff sort of smile. Not the fake kind; just one that says he's out of practice and ill. It makes me feel like a bit of a bastard, honestly.

"I'll, um, make your bed up," I say. "For later."

His room looks bare, but then, he never kept much in it or spent much time there. All the chaos occurred in the spaces we shared. _Fantastic metaphor, Watson. Put it in your blog, _I think savagely, wrestling with the sheets. I can hear voices, mostly hers. I can't make out what she's saying, though.

He's not eating—of course he's not—when I come out of his room. She is making him drink some Ribena instead, which is what I should have done.

"I'm going to do the shopping," I announce, and very nearly make it to the front door only to run up against Mycroft. He has an overnight case slung over his shoulder and two carrier bags with food and milk in them. It's alarming to see him holding anything so pedestrian. We go back upstairs.

Mycroft scans his brother and is not entirely displeased. "You're looking almost human," he says by way of greeting. "I've brought you some of your own clothing," he adds, raising an eyebrow at the length of bare, bony ankle Sherlock has on display. Or perhaps it's the tartan he disapproves of.

Sherlock says nothing, but accepts the overnight case without any signs of hostility. Mrs. Hudson takes the shopping. I can't quite imagine Mycroft in a Tesco. I wonder whether he went himself or had Anthea do it.

"John, I'd like a word." _In private_, he doesn't say, but it's implied.

"Yeah, all right. Upstairs?" I suggest. The British Government has to sit at the end of my bed. It's immensely awkward.

He clears his throat and frowns. "I apologise for my conduct last night. On reflection, I must agree that my brother would be better off under your care."

"That's funny," I say. "Because I'm not entirely sure that's true, now."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, for starters, it occurred to me that I nearly got him killed."

Mycroft creases his trouser leg with long fingers and studies my face. "That's one potential interpretation," he says. "Because you waited to tell me about your...friend?"

"I was angry," I admit. "I'd been kept in the dark about too many things. I thought I could take matters into my own hands."

"I confess I rather encouraged you in that. Things were not going to plan. Sherlock was missing, although I was unable to mention that to you at the time."

"Molly told me in the end. She thought I knew he was alive."

"Indeed. And as you now know, his behaviour was no longer terribly rational. He had become desperate. Had you not been present, there is a strong possibility he would have died."

"Alan was there. He could have taken that shot, and made a better job of it than I did."

"Possibly. But Alan does not share your unique attachment to my brother. Deliberation was not an option to you."

I lean into the headboard, remembering the moment I saw Sherlock in the window and the complete certainty I felt with the gun in my hand. "That's...fair."

"You and Sherlock have a certain affinity," Mycroft continues. "You're more alike than you know. Where you differ, you are complementary."

"I really don't—"

"You're both rash," he interjects. "Both inclined to act impulsively. Yet on the whole, you function better in tandem than you do alone."

"Do we."

"Of course you do. Surely that's obvious. I'm afraid your partnership became a liability once we had to keep Sherlock's survival a secret." He pauses. "I apologise for what we did. He believed it was necessary for your protection. It may not have been the most elegant solution. I know it was not the kindest."

"Bit understated," I say. I wonder what it's like _not_ to feel anger gnawing at me constantly. I find I've forgotten.

"Your friendship motivated him to bring down Moriarty's empire," Mycroft says. "With all the resources I could bring to bear, it still took him a year to do it. A year of constant labour, much of it grindingly dull."

"I've nothing to do with that. He would have done it because it was right."

"Perhaps," Mycroft allows. "But I know his desire to return here became obsessive." Again he pauses. "He panicked in the end. He turned to chemical assistance when he met a problem he couldn't solve. He accomplished his goal, but the consequences were dire."

"You mean beyond what he's done to himself?"

"I'm not currently at liberty to discuss the matter," he says. "Under slightly different circumstances, your influence might have prevented him from going off the rails, but our hands were tied. You could not be allowed contact."

"My influence? What the fuck was I supposed to do? I thought he was dead."

Mycroft sighs. "My brother has done some remarkably foolish, impulsive, and self-destructive things over the years. That said, in the time you've been his flatmate, his _friend_, cocaine has not been one of them. I cannot solely attribute that to his work with New Scotland Yard. Sherlock has, it seems, come to rely upon your perspective and companionship. He became obsessed with returning home, but he could not do so until he had solved a specific problem. He found the problem insoluble without assistance. It was a bit of a vicious circle. Under the circumstances, relapse was almost inevitable."

I shudder, thinking of that brilliant mind spinning out of control like a Catherine wheel. I wonder which was worse: the restlessness, the drugs, or simply being alone for too long. I think about what that year has done to me, believing he was dead, and wonder what I would have done if I'd known he was alive from the beginning. I wonder whether grief is worse than ceasing to exist, knowing that almost everyone who remembers you believes you to have been a fraud.

"I am hoping," Mycroft says, sounding uncharacteristically tentative, "that you will be willing to see him through the next few weeks."

"Through the withdrawal, you mean."

"Yes."

"Or it's rehab in hospital? Those are the only two options, in your opinion?"

He looks out the window and says, "I am not capable of helping him with this again."

I think of Harry's drinking. I think of my father's, which ultimately proved fatal. I wonder whether the brothers' traditional enmity can be attributed to Sherlock's chemical indiscretions, to Mycroft having to rescue him from himself. I wonder whether he will come to hate me as well.

I nod, and go over to the wardrobe. "I need you to take something out of the flat for me," I say. I pull out a small red leather box. I place it in Mycroft's hands.

* * *

**4: Get Some Sleep While You Can**

There is no mystery about this process, this gradual reassertion of ordinary neurochemistry. I've experienced it before, and will not, I think, be doing it again. To be fair, I intended that the last three times, so this, too, is the same. The burning compulsion will be the same. The frustrating unpredictability of focus will be the same. If I'm honest—if the symptoms are applied stripped of causality—I live in a perpetual state of withdrawal from _something._

It is ironic, perhaps, that the first day is softened by the benzodiazepine. Nice of Moran to have chosen a hypnotic. Like most hypnotic subjects, I remembered nothing about the experience afterwards. I've tried, but the data simply isn't there. The unexpected benefit, the irony, lies in the drug's effect on the GABA neurotransmitter. Having lived, it is something I might be prescribed briefly to ease the effects of dopamine depletion caused by withdrawal.

He didn't expect me to live. Obviously.

* * *

I would like very much to see the bullet, to note the subtle loss of energy, the slight distortion caused by its trajectory through the glass as it reached Sebastian Moran.

Failing this, I should like to see the wound, entry and exit, in his skull.

Above all, I should like to have seen John shoot him.

* * *

My brother has brought me clothing, and shockingly, a toothbrush. The clothes are the sort I used to wear, before I was dead. It is easier to remain in John's things for now. I smell very strongly of him at the moment: the detergent residue on the fabric, the soap, the shampoo. These things are labelled Clean and Masculine by the manufacturers, although each product approaches the problems of cleanliness and masculinity differently. Most favour citrus, some attempt vetiver, and still others intend pine and remind me of Dettol. I prefer the latter, if anything.

I did not use John's toothbrush, although I've sometimes appropriated them for various purposes in the past. It is one thing to borrow his scent. It is quite another to inoculate myself with his internal bacteria or to inflict mine upon him. There are supposed to be boundaries.

I did use his razor. The bristle and itch of my own hair is simultaneously compelling and repulsive. I categorise it as _masculine: not clean._ John's razor is electric, and thus both the process and results are unsatisfying. It appears to work along the principles of a belt sander: hair removal per abrasion. Given the state of my hands, it is the safest option. A subtle change in angle or pressure will not slip the edge of a blade between the layers of skin. This razor demands very little of its operator. I'd prefer something that requires precision.

* * *

Details of speech and expression are polished fragments in the tangled wreckage of social dynamics. I can't remember what it was like to see his face for the first time after nearly a year. I don't know what, if anything, was said. What was done. Lacking this, it stands to reason that I cannot accurately interpret his speech and expression now.

Myself, I find it seductively easy not to speak.

* * *

I am analysing the scratches on the kitchen table when he smashes his mug down in front of me.

"If you're not planning to invest in a set of semaphore flags, I would appreciate it if you could manage to open your bloody mouth and say something. This week would be nice."

He's started looking at me more often recently, and that should be good, but it's unsettling instead. There's a deep vertical crease in his brow and his mouth turns down more than I remembered it doing.

"Sherlock? Sleeping all day I can accept. But what the hell is this? Four days without a word?"

Now his face is very close to mine. I can feel his breath displacing my hair, and it's unpleasantly like the wings of a moth on my skin. I blink and scrub my hand over my face to banish the crawling sensation.

"Fine," he says, slumping into his chair.

While I was dead, I sometimes didn't speak for nearly a week. As a child, I managed two weeks once. I hadn't realised it was four days this time. I've clearly miscalculated something.

"There's little point," I say.

He laughs, but not as if I've been particularly funny. 'Well. Thanks very much for that."

"I assure you: when there's something worth saying, you'll be the first to know."

I go back to bed before he attempts to draw me into a conversation. As I've said, there's little point.

* * *

Molly comes to see me one afternoon. I've been awake for six hours.

"Still lying low?" she asks. It occurs to me that she doesn't know. An odd feeling of relief accompanies that thought.

She has brought me hair dye. "Not that it doesn't suit you—"

"It really doesn't," John interjects, arms folded.

"—but I thought you might like to be more yourself again."

"That's kind," I say, looking at the box. The woman depicted on it looks smug and oddly plasticised. Her hands have been airbrushed into inhumanity. Nothing to deduce there, really.

* * *

I can hear John laughing on the stairs. He's responding to a female voice (not Mrs. Hudson).

They come into the living room, and he's still smiling. "Here he is," he says easily. "Don't let him put you off."

Her name is Mary Morstan, she says, and she has found me through the _Science of Deduction._

Blonde hair, sun streaks, freckles. Schoolteacher on summer holidays. No makeup, hair and fingernails well-maintained but not attention-seeking. Thirty, happily unmarried, lives alone. No pets. Bruises on her arm, rather a strange shape.

"Paintball," I say. "Interesting choice of weekend entertainment."

She smiles. "Yes. You've rumbled me."

Her teeth are very white, and John seems to find them fascinating, judging by the way he keeps looking at her mouth. Typical.

"Let's skip to the part where you tell me why you're here."

"How do you feel about leaving the police out of this?" she asks.

"Confident," I say.

She laughs. "What do you make of these?" she says, pulling an envelope out of her pocket and handing it to me.

Cheap grade of paper, faint green crayon streak on the top left corner. School supply cupboard.

Six large pearls tumble out onto the table. Quite old, very faintly irregular. Not cultured, seldom worn. Part of a bracelet. Silver tarnish around the holes.

"Quite old. Probably Indian. Valuable."

"They've been sent to me in the post, one every year, for six years," she says.

"I take it you don't know the sender."

"No," she says. "There's no name on the return address, and the street doesn't appear to exist. I've checked it on the Internet. Different post codes each time."

"A client with a brain. Refreshing."

John shoots me a warning look. "Sherlock."

Surely that's a compliment? I ignore him. "Why come to me now?"

"I've received a text this morning." She pulls out a mobile phone, quite an old model, lacking in smart features.

_Covt Gden TS em strs 7 PM 2NTE. No police. FOAF Re: dad_

"Your father?"

She nods, no longer smiling.

"Dead?"

"Sherlock!" John is giving me a more intense version of the Not Good look.

"No, it's all right." She sighs. "He's been dead for ten years."

"Has he. Interesting."

"He died in prison, actually."

"What was he in for?"

"Antiquities smuggling."

"Where?"

"Wormwood Scrubs."

This might be interesting.

"Will you come?"

"God, yes. Be here at half six."

John sees her out, and returns looking pleased with himself. I am already looking through prison records.

_"_Don't forget the last one, John."

"Last what?"

"Schoolteacher. Girlfriend."

"Jesus Christ. She's a client."

I look at him.

"Okay, okay. What did the text say?"

"The abbreviations were painfully inept, but the gist is that we should meet this gentleman on the Covent Garden tube station emergency stair case at 7 tonight. He's a friend of a friend, whatever that means."

"We?"

"Absolutely. Bring the gun."

"Only if you leave the coat at home. That's the one with 193 steps, so if you pass out with heat exhaustion half way up, I'm leaving you on the stairs."

"Your concern is touching," I say.

* * *

Mary arrives, and immediately scores points by being dressed in paint-stained fatigue trousers and a tee shirt. Her hair is pulled back and she's got trainers on.

"And what kind of knife _does_ the well-protected lady carry these days?"

She starts and pulls a cheap and blatantly illegal balisong out of her pocket. 'How did you know?"

"The bulge in your trousers, of course."

The word for John's expression is, I think, _gobsmacked._ Quaintly vulgar. Fitting.

"John's got a gun, so we should be well-equipped. Coming?"

* * *

Our progress is impeded slightly by a large group of Spanish tourists who have been unable to translate the cautionary signs and have attempted to heave their luggage up the spiral staircase. Pushing past them, we encounter a blonde youth of about twenty-five dressed in a cheap blue suit. Office worker.

"Bart Sholto?"

"He's my brother. I'm Chad."

Damn. Nearly had that.

Mary introduces herself and we follow him up the rest of the stairs.

It becomes apparent that Chad reeks of something acrid and familiar.

'Cannabis?" I ask.

He frowns. "It's medicinal."

John raises an eyebrow, and the corner of my mouth twitches faintly. "Clearly."

* * *

Bart Sholto, who we are now going to see, lives on the Alton Estate. Plenty of time, then, for me to explain my deductions. Particularly as we've been doomed to public transportation, which I loathe.

"Your father was incarcerated for smuggling," I begin. "At Wormwood Scrubs."

"Yeah. But he's dead now."

"As of yesterday, yes. You don't seem terribly bothered. Cancer?"

"Yes. Systemic. Bart was our Dad's favourite. I wasn't terribly welcome anymore."

Strange to feel a moment of...solidarity. _Interesting._ "Why the text to Mary? Her father was in business with yours, I know."

"Business makes it sound legit," he says. "It wasn't."

Mary leans down. She's standing and clutching a handgrip, precariously, I note. One good bump and she'll fall into John. He's noticed that potential, I can tell. "Did you know my father?"

"No. Never met him. Dad wouldn't shut up about him, though."

"The text," I prompt.

Chad avoids looking at Mary. "Dad had some...loot he managed to hide before prison. He wanted Mary to have it."

"He felt guilty," John suggests. I swivel to look at him.

"False charges?" I ask Chad.

"How did you know?"

"Obvious. Sholto's recorded offence occurred well after Morstan's imprisonment. Morstan was his business partner, but was innocent of wrongdoing, despite the evidence against him. Your father couldn't resist another go, and was caught."

"Well, yes."

"Who has been sending me the pearls?" Mary asks. "It was you, wasn't it."

"Yeah. Dad fell ill six years ago, and he felt gutted about what he'd done. He wanted you to have everything, but Bart wouldn't agree to that in case the NHS wait was too long. The bracelet was already in pieces, so...Dad thought they might bring you some money."

"I'm sorry about your father," Mary says.

"Sorry about yours," Chad says.

"Very touching," I say, to speed them along. "When you say loot..."

"It's all jewelry," Chad says. "Thousands of pounds worth."

* * *

The estate is surrounded by panda cars and a crowd. As we push our way through, an elderly Pakistani woman seizes Chad's arm. "It's your brother! He's been shot."

"The jewels were in the flat, were they?" I ask him, over her head. "Did anyone else know?"

"No. Maybe. I don't think so." He's in shock. Clearly not going to be of much use now. I make my way towards the yellow tape, John right behind me.

"Oh hell," a familiar voice says. It's Sally Donovan. "Who called the freak?"

"Good to see you, too, " I reply, pleasantly.

"You can't be here," she says. "Piss off."

"Well, I am," I say.

"We've got useful information," John says. "The victim's brother came with us."

"Did he. Well, thanks, but we're not having _him,"_ she says. Meaning me.

* * *

Two hours later, John notices we've lost Mary in the crowd somewhere along the way. He insists on seeing her home, so I take my own cab.

Irksome, but predictable.

She's an heiress, so he'll agonise over that, but attractive and adventurous will make up for it, I suspect.

Pity. I very nearly liked her.

The jewels are gone, of course. I spend the rest of the night lost in thought. The killer had entered using a window-cleaning harness, but left us a nice calling card in the form of a footprint coated in tar.

Perfect.

John doesn't come home at all, but I've got evidence to examine.

He doesn't answer my texts, anyway.

* * *

I don't remember going to bed. Odd.

John may have a valid point regarding blood sugar levels, although I'm never going to admit it.

I roll out of the sheets, which have somehow got all tangled, and get dressed as quickly as I can.

I can only find one pair of shoes. No idea what I've done with the others. Strange.

This shirt doesn't fit terribly well; it's far too loose. As are my trousers. How have I managed not to notice before now? Unimportant.

I know where I need to be.

He's in the kitchen, making toast. It can wait.

"John! We've got to go. I've worked it out. The killer was in Docklands. Get my phone. I need you to text Mary with some names."

John turns and smiles at me. It's the smile I categorise as _you're mental, but I'm strangely fond of you._

"Good morning," he says. _"Who the hell is Mary?"_

* * *

**5: If You Didn't Blame Yourself**

He stares at me, frozen in mid-arc. I see it. He's going to shut down. He's going to turn and leave and take whatever this was away with him, and - **no.** Not this time.

**"Stop."** I halt him with my voice, and before he can even think of anything else, I've got his arm. I shove him into a chair.

"Sherlock Holmes, I saw you for a second, the _you I know_, and if you think I'm going to let you disappear again, well, you're wrong. So sit down and tell me what that was."

He opens his mouth and nothing happens.

"Start with Mary," I suggest, more kindly. "Who's she?"

"What if...What if it wasn't real?" He runs shaking hands over his face and says in a stifled-sounding voice, "It wasn't. Oh, hell, John."

"Sherlock?" I say, not sure what to do with this.

And then, of all the strangest things, he starts to laugh. Uncontrollably, almost sobbing with it.

"What?"

"I...I made up a case, John. I dreamed an entire case."

"You... Wait. So, everything? A crime, and evidence, and deductions, and... _everything?"_

"Yes! Now that I think of it, some it was exceedingly unrealistic." He wipes at his eyes, and then chokes, "Mary...Mary was your perfect girlfriend."

And that is so beautifully absurd, I start laughing with him.

* * *

He gives me the entire story, and it's strange, and brilliant, and well, yes: funny. Funnier than it has any right to be. It is funny in the way that the very saddest things sometimes are.

This dream of his reveals so many things he'd never be able to say. He thinks I can't stand him anymore. He thinks I'm going to leave. It would be easier, tidier, if he could believe I was happy somehow. Mary was his childishly symbolic parting gift. There's more, of course, but these, I think, are the important bits.

He really doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does.

After I've made us some tea, I look at him and say, "I've missed you, you mad bastard."

I'm not sure he knows what to do with this. "You're my friend. My best friend, actually," I continue, because it's true and must be said; bloke code be damned.

He swallows. "I'm sorry. All of this was...not what I wanted."

That's...not surprising. "Can I ask you some questions? About the last year?"

"Can I have a cigarette?"

How did he know I kept them, the ones he had when I found him? I shouldn't have. _Yet another reason why he shouldn't be with me,_ I think. _But hey, here we are. Sod it._

"Yeah, all right. I imagine they're rather stale," I add, and pull the packet out of the bucket under the sink where I've hidden them. I find some matches in the designated chaos drawer and throw them on the table.

I watch him light one, and I really cannot, _do not_ approve, but he makes it look like sleight-of-hand, and it's oddly compelling. "Here, give me one," I say.

I really can't say why I do it. Perhaps it's the strange alchemy of sympathy. The sulphur of the match makes my eyes water, and when I inhale, the smoke tastes the way the pesticide section in a garden centre smells. _There's no way I'll make it through all of this,_ I think.

"That tastes foul," he says, of his own. "Still." He closes his eyes in practiced bliss.

"Don't think this means I approve," I say. "Because I don't."

"I know," he says. "I used to think about that while I was dead. You disapproving."

"Really."

"I thought about you frequently," he adds. "I tried not to, but I did."

"Be careful. That's bordering on sentiment."

He flicks some ash into his teacup and frowns a bit. "True, anyway."

"Well," I say. "Give me the short explanation of the...you dying. I know Molly was in on it."

He does. His motives were honourable, if not entirely wise or sane. It is strangely gratifying to know that I was right about quite a lot of it. At the same time, it's extremely hard to hear.

It's easier to focus on tangential details. "Show me how it healed," I say.

"My collarbone?"

"It's nothing I haven't seen before."

It's a black shirt, one I've seen a thousand times, but it certainly doesn't fit the way it used to (like a second skin). He undoes two buttons rather clumsily and pulls it aside. "There."

His clavicle is not perfectly knit together. There's a slight protuberance where there never used to be one before. I can only imagine he was dreadful about immobilising his left arm while it healed. Not bad, though. Considering.

"Molly set it for me," he says.

I push aside _It should have been me,_ and offer, "Well, now we've got something in common. Of course, mine was a bullet."

He buttons his shirt closed again with a look I can't begin to interpret. One of the blank ones. "Such a little thing to show for being dead," he says, at last.

"But you're not." He doesn't know, _can't know,_ how many times I told him this in the dark once he'd returned: _You're not dead._

"No." He crushes out the remains of his second cigarette, pushes the packet away across the table.

Good. "So, then. What else?"

He rubs his fingers together. "I had to bring them down. All the rest of them, I mean."

"Moriarty's people?"

"Yes."

He hasn't said, and I shouldn't ask, but I do. "But before that. Who did they bury?"

"Not my idea," he says, and pulls the cigarettes back towards him, lights one again.

I feel so very sick, and it's not the smell of stale tobacco, of burning. It's the memory of standing by that lying headstone and pleading with him not to be dead. Pleading with -

He exhales in a shudder and says, "I think you know."

I do, of course. Of course I do. My eyes burn. My throat closes.

"I didn't, at first," he says savagely, mouth twisted. "She told me afterwards."

I can't speak.

"I know," he says, long fingers whitening at the edge of the table. "I can't even..." He closes his eyes, and says, all in a rush, "It was wrong._ I know that_. I do."

"Yes," I say. "But...It was convenient."

Something about that, what I say, makes his face crumple, the cigarette fall from his hand. I take it, drop it into the cup of cold tea, where it sighs and goes out. "I'm sorry," I say. And because it's the thing that rises in my throat, that presses behind my eyes every time I see him, I add, "I've done something awful."

He looks at me, eyes dull, and I go on, because it hurts, because it's stupid and shameful and wrong. It's a confession and an offering. A poisoned gift.

"I knew Sebastian Moran," I say. "I knew him before I knew who he was, and he was my friend."

His face is so still.

"He was my friend because I was so fucking alone, and he seemed all right at the time. I didn't know who he was. I thought his name was Bill. So we were friends and I bloody well drank tea with him on Sundays and then one day your brother showed me his picture and told me about the Arch."

He opens his mouth, and before he can say anything, I add, "And he told me my friend was going to kill me, but I still didn't tell Mycroft I knew him. So Sebastian Moran nearly killed you, instead. All because I was an idiot."

"But the Arch," he says. "That was...That was Moriarty's phone."

I stop, breathing hard, because I wonder if he's heard me. That I made friends with a murderer. I haven't even got to the part about -

"No. That was my fault." He crushes the cigarette packet in his hands, and throws it at the wall. "I broke into Moriarty's phone, and when I did, it triggered the explosives. _I_ did that."

He's shaking now. Because he thinks—

"No!" I slap my hand down over his. It's cold. "Stop. You couldn't have known that. It was a trap, wasn't it? It's not your fault you set it off."

His fingers stiffen under mine, and he says, very low, "No. I should have... I couldn't think anymore. It was a problem I couldn't solve, and I...You know what I did then. All possible consequence became irrelevant."

"So. That was the cocaine."

"I needed to remove the filters from my thinking. I was bogged down in pointless detail and I couldn't make connections anymore. So yes, I did. It wasn't ideal. Clearly. It wasn't good."

"No. I can't imagine that it was."

I've wondered whether he knows this about himself; that for all of his insistence upon logic, what he really does is art. Inspiration is fickle, as every artist knows, and he wouldn't be the first to try to invoke it via chemistry. God, that's terrifying, though. For him, brilliance itself is the addictive substance, not some alkaloid that offers a momentary high. That's probably incurable, that need.

I am disgusted with myself for sounding like a badly-written anti-drugs pamphlet, but I have to say something. "You know that there are always better options than that." I still have his hand trapped, and that's starting to feel strange and uncomfortable.

"Sporting activities? Friends?" he suggests scornfully. _"God,_ perhaps? Don't be ridiculous."

"If it's just to help you think—"

_"You_ helped me think," he says bitterly. "Under the circumstances, that was not an option."

"You can't lay that at my door. It wasn't _my_ choice," I say, and he tears his hand away and smashes it into the table.

_"I know_. I'm not!"

I am so sick of this; of this horrible thing inside me that makes me savage and tear at him, as if he doesn't feel or care, as if I can _make_ him.

He's sitting there, white with self-loathing. It's real and it's ugly and it's human. Distressingly human.

"Everything I do," he gasps. _"Everything."_

"No," I sigh. "Not everything."

And because I've been wrong about so many things, I take the chance that I am also wrong about this, about putting my arms around him and letting him cry.

I do.

He does.

* * *

**Notes:**

You may have noticed a certain tendency in the chapter headers. I am inordinately fond of Aimee Mann.


	5. A Thing Without a Name

**A Thing Without a Name**

* * *

**1: Prologue**

A grey-haired Detective Inspector frowns at his computer screen, which displays an interdepartmental message concerning the missing keys to Wembley. _He'd know exactly where they've gone,_ he thinks. _If—_

This is going to be an incredibly expensive mistake for someone. He's glad it's not his problem.

Well, no. He _hopes_ it won't become his problem.

* * *

In Hyde Park, an impeccably dressed man carrying an umbrella looks out towards the place where the Wellington Arch used to stand. After London recovers from its Olympic fever, they'll erect a suitable monument to the Arch Bomb victims there. Sculptors and architects are already submitting conceptual sketches to the appropriate agency. Many of them are dreadfully vulgar. He briefly considers the somewhat pedestrian challenge of subtly influencing the ostensibly democratic selection process.

A pale woman with gloriously titian hair approaches him and asks him for the time. An ordinary observer would identify her as an American. It's something in her voice, her dress, her walk.

There is, of course, nothing ordinary about him. He sees beyond surfaces.

He shows her the face of his watch, and when she darts away in consternation, dropping a weatherproof map of London in her haste, he calmly bends down to retrieve it.

People can be so astonishingly careless.

* * *

A slight, rather careworn man in a checked shirt sits at a scarred kitchen table and stares accusingly at the crisp white sheet of paper in his hand.

_Dr. John H. Watson_

_221b Baker Street_

_London_

_NW1 6XE_

_20 July 2012_

_Dear Dr. Watson._

_It is with great pleasure that we extend the following offer of employment on behalf of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust..._

He is perfectly qualified for the position. It would be madness not to accept.

He hadn't submitted an application.

* * *

He is suspended in waiting like an insect in amber. It's a small price to pay for a return to life, but it's growing harder by the day.

Everything around him clamours for attention. None of it matters _enough._ He longs for depth and colour and something new.

There _is_ something new, but it is small and fragile. It is neither person nor thing. It could be classified, perhaps, as an ambience. It is a thought that hasn't found words. A neurochemical souvenir: _Wish you were here._

Something else, then. Something quantifiable; something he can safely examine without its components falling to ash beneath his scrutiny. Something that unquestionably demonstrates his own tendency to exist as he, in turn, illuminates the interior mechanisms of a stranger's actions. Something of worth.

_The work._

* * *

A man leans into the wind, steadying himself against the rails on the deck as the familiar mass of Holyhead looms through the spray. He finds it difficult to keep his footing, but he'd rather be here alone than belowdecks in the hubbub of families and fruit machines.

Here, at least, he can hear himself think. It would be nice if he could come to a conclusion before their arrival, but it's not likely. He cannot get beyond this deceptively simple question:

What is blood worth?

It's entangled with other concepts like _family_ and _loyalty._ Do they retain value, though, if the participants defined their importance differently? What, if anything, invalidates such bonds? What, if anything, requires action?

He's wondered about this for years, but only recently has it become a pressing concern. He's got some time, at least, to think it over. Some, but not much.

Soon he'll be on a train, rushing through the Welsh countryside towards England, towards London.

Soon the games will begin.

* * *

**2: What We Need**

It's Sunday morning—nearly noon—and the flat seethes with unspoken discontent. John is worrying the end of his pencil, trying to organise his thoughts. Sherlock is sprawled on the sofa with John's laptop, watching an archived BBC One documentary on Tuareg salt caravans.

John is trying to organise his thoughts, but if he's honest, he's not doing very well. He should be sorting out the more immediate bits of the future; that was his goal when he sat down with an old notebook. Instead, he finds himself staring at his flatmate.

_There _was a bit of the future that had been worked out, at least. They were definitely flatmates again. It was one of the things they had discussed on that strange morning when they had finally begun to speak to each other properly.. There had been a certain amount of necessary honesty, which should have been freeing, but instead led to a new sort of awkwardness. Because here he was, now, keeping secrets already. He didn't mean to, but he simply hadn't got round to saying anything about, well, the job offer.

Actually, no. It was entirely his own decision to make, wasn't it? While John hadn't actually applied for this particular position, he _had _begun the process of looking into other vacancies; had done so soon after he found himself trapped at home with a recovering, not-dead consulting detective. At the time, the hunt was something to do during the long, frustrating hours he spent on high alert while Sherlock slept or stumbled around the flat in ominous silence. No matter how things were resolved between them, John knew he needed to move forward with his own life. Recent events had shown him, through contrast, that the time he'd spent playing GP at Sarah's practice had been unsatisfying.

He'd started looking into emergency medicine, his rationale being that he'd be doing genuine good and making use of skills from the MEDEVAC days. Well. Perhaps there'd be a bit more removing broken glass from university students after drunken argumentss, but still. He _could_ be saving lives. He would not be standing idly by when something like the Arch Bombing occurred. He would be of use.

The thing was, though, that if he found something—if he and Sherlock ever returned to their previous lives, to solving crimes and all of that—there would be times when John could not simply call in sick at a moment's notice. His work would be of equal importance. Sherlock would have to respect that. Could he?

Consequently, he had failed to mention the job offer he'd received without interview, without so much as an application. The offer had arrived like something in a dream, and absurd as it seemed, it appeared to be legitimate. That sort of understated bureaucratic wizardry could only mean one thing: Mycroft Holmes. What did it mean? Was it a merely an odd way of saying _Thanks for everything, but he's fine now, so kindly move along?_ No, because if Mycroft had wanted that, the offer would have come in from further afield. This job was in London. That meant something more like, _Stay with him._ Thanks were probably included, but not the most important component.

It is unfair. It is like something out of a particularly brutal fairy tale. _Here is everything you want. You've only got to do this one thing..._

And that's insulting. Because he _is _staying, isn't he? Of his own volition, and completely independent of Mycroft's efforts to secure his compliance.

Although, as John thinks back to the day he'd accepted responsibility for seeing Sherlock through withdrawal, he hadn't been quite so clear in his resolve at the time. He'd been angry and muddled. Guilty, actually.

So he chews at his pencil, staring at his flatmate and trying not to betray his inner turmoil. It will probably be a relief when Sherlock says something to indicate John has failed to conceal his quandary.

* * *

Sherlock is studiously avoiding looking at John. He has struggled to occupy himself thoroughly in thoughts of salt blocks: hewn from the desert and carried endless miles strapped to pack animals; scoured by sand and imbued with fascinating mineral compounds along the way. They _could_ be fascinating. It's the sort of thing he could examine, _could_ find interesting...if he had a sample...if he had his microscope. He doesn't of course. He hasn't asked.

Hasn't asked for that, or his violin, or anything, really. Life has become a perpetual exercise in self-denial. And he's not some sort of early Christian ascetic, so what is the _point?_

What, in fact, is the point of not talking about The Letter?

Why is Sherlock denying the impulse to leap to his feet and say _I know about the letter. It's your choice what you do. I won't be—_

Won't be _what?_

An impediment?

Apparently, the universe is infinite. Surely, then, there is enough room in it for two men to sit and think in silence, without boundaries of private contemplation being violated.

Boundaries _have_ been crossed. Of necessity, perhaps, but they have been. Sherlock looks at John—or _doesn't_ look at John—and he feels the ghost of the doctor's hands on his back, almost distressingly real although it has been days since That Day. The day they talked and Sherlock fell apart.

Catharsis is supposed to be a good thing. Various cultures have institutionalised it in festivals, in art, in literature, in music.

Music, which cannot be allowed, because that would announce his presence, his return. Because a muted pizzicato wouldn't be enough, would it? It wouldn't. He'd have to hear it sing.

There's a very real possibility he wouldn't be able to play very well, anyway. It has been a year. He hasn't completely regained strength or flexibility in his arm and shoulder since he broke his clavicle, and while the thought of _pain_ isn't a particularly strong deterrent, the thought of inaccuracy, of being less-than-good, _is._ The thought of asking Mycroft to return the violin to him, of betraying any sort of need, is.

He pushes his soft (pointless) fingers together, flexing the phalangeal joints beyond discomfort. He grinds his teeth. He's been doing this for some time now, apparently. He can detect the coppery savour of blood.

It is so hatefully quiet.

Ah. The documentary has ended. How long has he been sitting here, looking at nothing? Is John—

Yes. He's still here. No longer gnawing on his pencil like a disconsolate rabbit; no, by the sound of it, he's moved on to staring bleakly at something. Possibly Sherlock. It's ridiculous.

It would be _so easy_ to leap off the couch, throwing the laptop down and—no. Carefully closing it—he's careful now—and setting it on the table, which rather spoils the effect of leaping to his feet. The point is to dispel ennui with sudden, violent motion. And then what?

_And then what?_ There is nothing to _do._ Not if he's bound, _and he is_, not to mention the letter.

Fine.

_Fine._

_You know what would make this better,_ begins the hateful, insidious voice he's been forcibly disregarding for weeks. _You could go upstairs and—_

Absolutely _not. _He has made it this long. He hasn't even searched. Somewhere along the way, that became unnecessary. _Had to _become unnecessary.

Because, and this brings another tactile ghost with it, he is never going to find himself caught beneath John's incredulous and disapproving glare again, John's fingers stabbing at his arm like an accusatory scalpel. Like a needle.

One of the things he had said That Day, long after Sherlock had composed himself (discordantly) was this:

_Believing you were dead was one of the worst things I've ever experienced. Or I thought so, but then I realised it was worse to know that you weren't dead, but you very nearly fucked it up anyway. Perhaps I might never have known if you had, but I _do _know now. If you ever do something like that again—_

_You'll do _what?

_If you ever do something like that again, then you might as well be dead, Sherlock, because I will go. I will leave, and you won't ever see me again. Because—no, _listen. _Because you will continue to do dangerous things, and you will take risks, and possibly even get shot or stabbed or worse. But I'll be damned if you die with a fucking needle in your arm, or because you're so high that it never occurs to you to make a proper plan before you sit down and play cards with a man who's got a flat full of guns and a reason to kill you._

On the whole, it was very nearly easy to agree to what John wanted. To do so, and very carefully _not_ say, _I know. I've already worked that out myself. I _will _never do it again, so long as—_because that isn't fair.

Because Sherlock had already said it, or something like it, earlier, and while it was true (is true), _true_ isn't _good._ Not when it comes to this.

John is essential, in a way that Sherlock very decidedly is not.

It's quiet.

It's hateful.

His jaw aches.

* * *

"This would all be so much easier without the Olympics," John says. He has surprised them both by abruptly snapping his pencil in two against the edge of the table.

Sherlock, who has been staring blindly at an unchanging screen for the better part of an hour, sits up, closes John's laptop with exaggerated care, swivels into a sitting position, and turns to look at him.

"If...you know. If we didn't have to pretend that you're not here."

Mycroft made it perfectly clear that the inevitably dramatic reappearance of his brother would not be welcomed until the Games are over. Soothing the public (and the international sporting community) after the Arch Bombing was difficult enough. While the Yard can now indisputably prove that Richard Brook was a fabrication, that Sherlock wasn't a fraud or a criminal, there will still be awkward questions. The media will have to be negotiated carefully, and so, for that matter, will the Yard.

Lestrade still doesn't know.

"We could find you something real to do," John suggests, a bit feebly.

"I _am_ trying to keep myself occupied, John."

"It's not working, is it?"

"Not much, no." Sherlock tilts his head back and rubs at his jaw. "Anything in the paper?"

"It's all about the Games."

Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"I suppose we _could _actually watch them. I never really have before, you know," John offers, spinning one half of the broken pencil on the table. He wonders when they started making them out of compressed sawdust instead of proper wood.

"Honestly, John. _Sport?"_ Sherlock makes it sound like a particularly uninteresting disease.

The pencil half leaps away into the kitchen as if launched from a trebuchet. "Some of the events are quite dangerous, Sherlock. Javelins. Horses. Fencing. Whitewater. Gymnastics. Anything could happen."

"Tedious media masturbation. Obsession over pointless distinctions. Nationalism. Sentimentality."

"You're not intrigued by bitter international rivalry? Someone usually cheats, I believe. Or someone might defect. Both Koreas are competing."

"Dull. Obvious."

"Well, I can hardly expect you to take interest in the extremely fit women's beach volleyball teams..."

Sherlock snorts at this, which was very much John's intention.

"We should probably watch the opening ceremonies with Mrs. Hudson, though. She'd like that. I expect _you'll_ hate it, but at least you can shout at the television. There'll be pop music and absurd national costumes and potentially disastrous special effects."

"Invite Mycroft. He can bore you with each participant country's GNP as the teams go by."

"How about this: Open flame. Torches. Surely that has potential!"

"I'm sure they've been practicing for weeks." _Potential_ accidents are not enough to pique the man's interest, it seems. "No. The best we can hope for is someone going mad and stuffing a shuttlecock down another athlete's throat."

"You actually know about badminton being an Olympic sport? _I_ didn't even know that until this week."

"Apparently it is."

"I suppose it's more athletic than some of the other things," John muses. "Shooting an air rifle never struck me as particularly Olympic. I mean, there's skill involved, but...still." He shrugs.

"I'm reasonably certain the Greeks of antiquity didn't play beach volleyball, either. Whatever _that _is."

"Yeah. Well. I'm still a bit surprised you're familiar with the events. Not exactly the sort of thing you tend to bother with."

"I merely glanced at the timetable," Sherlock says mildly.

"Why?"

"I was bored. It's information." He smiles, ever-so-slightly, and adds, "And in any case, if we're very lucky, there really _will_ be a murder."

* * *

**3: Coming in First**

Matthew Burke is stumbling with exhaustion when he finally makes his way back to the room he shares with his team mate. He's hoping Jack will be asleep, because he doesn't particularly want to listen to a fresh rundown of Jack's triumph and his own failure. They'd trained together for years, and at one time, Matt might have counted them friends, but that's a distant memory now. Somewhere around the time Jack won his first gold medal, things began sliding downhill.

So he carefully negotiates the hallway, the lock, and the door handle in silence. Inside, it is dark. He can't even hear his roommate's trademark whistling snore. Perhaps he's not there.

He really shouldn't, but he's thinking he'll just manage to slide into bed without turning on the lights, without alerting a possibly-resident Jack to his presence at all. He slips off his flip-flops and pulls off his jacket. He's carefully edging his way around the bed when his bare toes encounter something unexpected on the floor. It feels like—it might be —a _hand._

Matthew suppresses the memory of reaching out his own hand to the other man as the scores came in, as Jack accepted congratulations from the Frenchman in the next lane. Jack had turned his reflective hematite goggled gaze towards him, and then past him, as if Matt wasn't even there. Jack, who had confessed earlier that week as they stood together in the airport, abuzz with nerves, "I'm not sure I'm going to do it this time, Matt," but then proceeded to win gold by a ridiculous margin anyway as if he had never admitted to weakness, to humanity.

Jack, who always used to conclude the worst team practices by saying, "We're all in this together," and then stopped. Jack who said he was in it for the challenge when they were both swimming the same times, but who now skipped training for photo shoots and interviews. Jack who laughed at Matthew and the others for their steadfast insistence upon routine, accountability, and endless training. Jack who was caught with pot in his bag six months ago and made it here anyway. Jack who is, apparently, lying on the floor now instead of in his own bed.

Matthew pokes at him, deliberately this time, but he doesn't make a sound, so he switches on the light.

Jack is stretched out on his back, long limbs splayed out like a starfish, huge feet pointed towards the ceiling. He seems uncharacteristically pale. Matthew studies the Olympic rings tattooed on his hairless chest as if he's about to be quizzed on them, and eventually dares to look at his face.

Jack has always looked strange while sleeping. In repose, the irregularity of his features, the absurd length of his face, become more apparent. His recent decision to start etching stars and stripes into his dishwater buzz cut only makes him more surreal. Yet somehow, with his brilliantly green eyes open, with his face in constant, manic motion, no one ever seems to notice that the divine sculptor's chisel had slipped in carving out Jack Cutter's face.

His eyes _are_ open now, but Matthew suddenly knows that he isn't seeing anything. That he can't see anything.

Matthew bends down to touch his bare calf, which seems somehow less personal than the other options, and it's cold.

He straightens up again, dizzy with the surge of blood through his own depleted body, and makes his way carefully to the door, to the hallway.

Nothing in his life has prepared him for the words he'll have to say to someone.

* * *

The dream begins with a nice breakfast. Truth be told, it is probably nicer than the reality ever was. It helps that the light is golden, birds are singing, and no one is talking.

John swings his feet under his chair—he is too small to reach the floor with them—and carefully scrubs a toast soldier through a trail of egg. The plate is a very vivid blue, and has, for some reason, a duck emblazoned upon it.

_I don't see why they should have to burn them, _his mother says, distant at the other end of the table, and that's when he notices the smell.

Something _is_ burning.

John's subconscious takes this opportunity to shatter the cheerfully yellow curtained window and fill the air with dust and whistling shells before he snaps into wakefulness with a gasp.

Only to become aware, slowly, that the flat does, indeed, smell of equal parts breakfast and burning.

221B is no stranger to smoke or early-morning misadventures involving the kitchen. The scent drifting up the stairs should hardly come as a surprise. Sherlock had spent the previous night alternately pacing and perusing the internet on John's laptop. John was reasonably certain he'd never actually gone to bed, which was almost reassuring in its echo of times past, although he was still uncharacteristically quiet about whatever he was doing.

John firmly wills his heart rate to slow and then climbs out of bed. He follows a series of clanking sounds down the stairs and into the kitchen.

There, he finds Sherlock with his dressing gown sleeves rolled to the elbows, presiding over a steaming pot with metal tongs in one hand and a fish slice in the other. "What on earth are you doing?" John asks.

Without turning, Sherlock holds up the fish slice hand and says, "Wait." He plunges the unlikely combination of utensils into the pot and removes first one, and then a second tea cup from what appears to be boiling water. After peering gravely into them, he seems satisfied with what he sees there, for he switches the cooker off and says to John, "You might make us some toast. I had done, only I burnt it."

It is only then that John notices the small collection of plates (and another pot) on the kitchen table. The pot is brimming with an unidentifiable gelatinous substance, but two of the plates clearly contain—

"Poached eggs?"

"I think so, yes." Sherlock comes to stand beside John, peering into the pot full of eggy tentacles. "That was the Vortex Method," he remarks ruefully. "Might have worked, but there was a distraction during a critical point in the process."

"The toast burning," John guesses.

"Precisely."

"Sometimes it sticks," John says kindly, but upon seeing the charred remains protruding from the chromed instrument of their doom, he adds, "Mind you, if you switch it to five, it _always_ burns."

"Does it?" Sherlock is (miraculously!) scouring pots, so his flatmate removes the ruined slices and sets about preparing new toast without further comment.

The teacup eggs are the best ones. They're perfect, in fact. John swabs the last of the yolk from his plate with a bit of buttery toast and heaves an expansive sigh. "Well. That was an unexpected start to the day."

The cook has made very little progress with his own egg. Perched on his chair like a lanky gargoyle, he balances his second cup of coffee on his flanneled knees and gazes at his plate as if it has betrayed him.

"Didn't you like yours, then? I thought they were rather good."

Sherlock wrinkles his nose. "I find the texture unpleasantly..._springy_. You can have mine, if you like." He sets his cup down and pushes the plate across the table. He has eaten the toast, at least.

"Were you researching cookery on my laptop all night?"

"Among other things."

"That's a bit disturbing."

"It is." Sherlock wraps his arms around his knees gloomily, locking his fingers together as if to prevent himself from disintegrating with restlessness. "I don't think I can stand this tedium much longer, John. I. Am. Losing. My. Mind."

"Clearly," John agrees, through a mouthful of soggy egg. He swallows and suggests, not for the first time, "We could ask your brother to return some of your things, if it would help. Honestly, I don't understand why you haven't already."

"It wouldn't be enough." Sherlock fixes his pale eyes on his flatmate, and adds, shrewdly, "You're not exactly scintillated by this caged existence, yourself."

"Well. No." John runs his tongue over his teeth and carefully refrains from glancing at the letter he's tucked under a wooden bowl of overripe tomatoes.

"Perhaps you'd better accept the offer, then." Sherlock's tone is bored, but his expression is not. It's fierce, and perhaps a bit desperate.

"The...Oh." John isn't surprised he knows, of course; he is surprised by the length of time it has taken Sherlock to _mention_ that he knows. There's no point is dissembling, then. "The NHS position."

"It's what you want, isn't it?"

"Yes. But it's all a bit Faustian. I'm not sure it's worth owing Mycroft a favour. I should think you, of all people, would agree."

But he doesn't. "Don't be ridiculous, John. The _favour,"_ and here he twists his lips a bit in contempt, "has already been done."

"I will not accept pay for being...for acting as your handler," John says.

"Think about it. The position is real. Your qualifications are valid. There's no point in making it an ethical dilemma."

"Isn't there?" John asks. "Because I—"

"The offer is genuine, and I suggest you accept it," Sherlock cuts in, dismissively. He surges to his feet and heads off to his bedroom in a swirl of dressing gown. "There's no such thing as a soul, and if there were, my brother wouldn't know the first thing to do with one. Yours, in particular."

* * *

Gregory Lestrade is no stranger to high-profile investigations, but this is one he could do without. _Why does it have to be a bloody Olympic athlete? I'd sooner have an MP with a knife in his back._

Matthew Burke, the twenty-four year old American seated across from him, is clearly bewildered and in shock, despite having discovered the body thirteen hours before. _Probably hasn't slept,_ Greg thinks. _How could he?_

"So you weren't exactly mates," he suggests, fixing what he hopes is a sympathetic gaze on the Olympian swimmer.

Matthew blinks at him. "Mates?"

"Sorry. You don't say that in the States, do you? I meant, you weren't friends."

"Oh! No. We weren't. No." The young man's cocoa-coloured fingers tighten around his plastic water bottle, and he amends, "We were, once. But...it's competition, you know? Some people, they become successful but they're still who they were before. But Jack...It all kind of went to his head."

"So...Would you say that he was a bit unpopular with the others, then?"

"I..." Matthew is clearly caught between the desire to be helpful and a sense of propriety. "I guess so...He didn't hang out with us anymore. He was pretty rude to the coaches. And to the other swimmers. There's a girl on our team who—" He stops himself, as if afraid of betrayal. "You think he was murdered? Wasn't it just his heart or..."

"We have to ask," Greg says, reassuringly. "We're still awaiting reports from Toxicology."

"You don't think I...I mean, I _didn't_ like him, but I would never..." The American swimmer looks distinctly panicked now.

"This is just routine, Matthew." Greg sighs and tilts his chair back against the wall. "The girl you mentioned..."

"Christine. Our coach had us partnered up with the women's team for training. She's really good, you know? But Jack was really awful to her." Matthew frowns. "He, uh, he was always hitting on her."

The light on Greg's telephone flickers into sudden, frenetic activity, but he ignores it.

"Go on."

"He wouldn't leave her alone. Some of us...Well, we complained to the coach. So they swapped our training partners. She's mine now. Anyway. She told me Jack threatened her. He said he'd make sure Christie got bumped off the team."

Greg raises an eyebrow. "And did he?"

"No. They said they'd suspend him, but he...Jack was the best. They weren't really going to risk losing him. Even after he was caught smoking weed." He sighs. Bitterly, Greg thinks. "I talked to him about it, and he said he was under a lot of pressure. Like that was an excuse. But in the end, he apologised. So they let him keep going."

"Hmm." Greg's telephone light is still flashing, and a chat window has popped up on his computer screen. He glances at it, then reads it again, and groans faintly.

**SDonovan:** **Answer your bloody phone!**

**SDonovan: We've got another one.**

**SDonovan: Gymnastics coach.**

* * *

**4: Want to See Some More?**

The hotel room is cramped, but he doesn't need more than this. Stretched out on the dingy bedspread with his shoes on—_and_ _what would your mother say to that?_—he plots a course for the day using the map of London on his phone. The lightbulb over the bed is going; its flicker is bad enough that he switches it off and makes do with the dim grey light seeping in from the tiny window that looks out over a dismal gravelled rooftop.

He's managed to acquire a bit of a cold, possibly due to the wind on the ferry and the subsequent time spent packed in amongst the other passengers on the train to London. There's a crumpled tea bag and a little sleeve of sugar on a shelf with the battered cup and beige plastic kettle. He puts the water on and rummages through his bag for the cheap souvenir shirt he bought in one of the newsagents near Paddington. Garish it may be, but it's also a decent piece of camouflage in a city full of tourists. It will not do to stand out as something other than ordinary.

"Not at all ordinary," he hums to himself, soft Irish voice lost in the din of car horns and shouts in the street below. "Nothing like ordinary at all."

The tea isn't any good, but then he hadn't expected it to be. It is hot. It is liquid. It will sustain him.

"Time to do it again," he whispers, and slips away, unremarked, into the city outside.

* * *

Lestrade hasn't slept for two days, and he cannot help but wonder when psychosis will set in. "Oh. That'd be now," he mutters. He has just caught sight of the tall man in an expensively neutral grey suit, fist poised to knock politely at the frame of his open door.

"Detective Inspector," he intones smoothly, his voice immediately setting the other man's teeth on edge. "May I?"

"Yeah. All right," Greg says gruffly, and waves Mycroft Holmes into the chair opposite his desk.

There's a sheaf of reports on the chair, but Mycroft whisks it aside and deposits it neatly on the DI's desk before folding himself down into the seat, legs crossed neatly at the ankle. "So _good_ to see you again," he says, and Greg is expecting a supercilious almost-smile, but it never arrives. Is that more or less disturbing? He's not sure.

This day will not be improved by the sudden addition of a Holmes. _The wrong Holmes, _Greg amends, and feels the strange, almost desperate blankness that typically descends with thoughts of the dead consulting detective. He looks at his feet, realises they are on the desk, and decides they'd be better on the floor.

"Remain as you are," Mycroft says, pointing his ever-present umbrella at the desk, before hooking it over the armrest. He folds his hands together and looks expectantly at the other man, as if _he's_ been called here, as if he hasn't turned up unexpectedly for some unfathomable, possibly sinister reason.

"Yeah. Okay." Greg squares his jaw and adds, "Look. If this is about your brother, everything has been sorted now. Well. I'm sure you know that. We're going to—"

He stops, puzzled, because Mycroft is smiling now, and it's not the usual, impersonally tight variety. He shakes his head a little, and ploughs onward. "We'll let the public know, but just now, there's a bit of a nightmare on, and it needs to wait."

"The murdered athletes," Mycroft says, and holds up an admonitory hand, the one with the understated wedding band. 'Yes, of course. They were murdered, weren't they?"

"Well, we..."

"Jack Cutter, the American swimmer: needle mark between the toes, I believe. Liu Jie, the Chinese women's gymnastics trainer: needle mark in her inner left arm. Werner Achen, the German fencer: also between the toes. The signs would, in fact, point to these injections being self-administered. But murder, nonetheless."

Greg's mouth is hanging open, and he closes it with a snap. "You've, um. Done your homework, haven't you."

"Interesting that no one has managed to identify the substance, though, isn't it?"

"They're still doing tests. They all died from sudden heart failure. Probably a performance enhancer gone wrong. Although...The Chinese coach throws a spanner in that theory."

"Ah, Detective Inspector. Surely _any_ death can be described as a sudden heart failure."

Greg rolls his eyes. "Right. Yeah. The point is, we're going to stop this. We've cautioned the athletes—"

"And much good it may do you. There are already firm rules in place about chemical enhancement. I think you'll find that being stripped of a medal for misconduct is a stronger deterrent than death for these men and women. And yet, they do seem to be dying, don't they?"

"We'll find how it's getting in, and stop it."

"I certainly hope so. The British nation has suffered enough high-profile humiliation this year."

Greg has had more than enough micromanagement from the Chief Superintendent. He doesn't need this from a government spook as well. "That some kind of a threat?" he asks, keeping his tone casual.

Mycroft laughs. "A threat? Certainly not." He leans forward and says softly, "I have come to offer you some assistance. Is that unwelcome?"

"Um. No. Sure. Okay." Is he going to feed the Yard restricted information? Deduce something from thin air like his brother? Greg is more than aware of the similarities between the two men. Both have—_had—_the ability to make him feel like he's being dissected on the spot. This one is just a bit more...polished. Sherlock would have been rude, but Sherlock would have gotten to the point by now. "So, you...?"

"Me? Goodness, no." Mycroft reaches behind him with one long arm and shuts the office door, rather abruptly. This done, he leans forward and places his hands on the DI's desk.

Greg starts, and immediately takes his feet off the desk. Only he's hyperextended his right knee while they were up there, and now he has to strike it repeatedly with his palm to restore the circulation. _You're getting too old for this, _he thinks. "Bollocks," he says.

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"

"I—Never mind." Greg reaches for his coffee, cold now despite the polystyrene cup, and takes a healthy swig. "So. What're you going to pull out of your hat, then?"

He hesitates, and then he says, slowly, "About my brother..."

Between gruesome murders, late nights, bad coffee, worse food, and harsh cigarettes, Greg Lestrade practically lives on antacids. But they're no match for the shock of the cold white words: _He's not dead._

As he heaves over the wastepaper basket, his flush of shame is compounded by the sudden appearance of a paper cup filled with water. He looks up and sees nothing but concern on Mycroft's face.

"I thought it would be best if I told you first."

* * *

In another life, John Watson had briefly, mistakenly, thought he'd caught a glimpse of Sherlock in love. Now, as he watches his flatmate running famished fingers over the weathered varnish of his violin, he realises once again that Irene Adler was something else altogether. The man is positively devouring the instrument with his eyes; in fact, John wouldn't be surprised to see him _kiss_ the damned thing as he lowers his head over the strings.

So it comes as a surprise when, rather than reaching for the bow, he gently returns it to its case and snaps it shut. The sound is final, almost brutal in the silence of the flat.

"It's, ah...All right then?" he ventures, blinking in perplexed concern.

_"It's_ fine," Sherlock says. "Better than I left it. Mycroft's taken it to the luthier. Smug bastard," he adds, but without much venom. He sighs, and sinks into his chair, unfocussed eyes skipping over the sea of boxes that have appeared in their living room.

Suddenly, John knows. He clears his throat, a bit awkwardly, and says, "There are...Exercises and things. For your shoulder, I mean."

"I'm aware of that."

"Had to do them myself, you know."

Sherlock opens his mouth as if to utter a sharp retort and then closes it again. He touches his clavicle fleetingly and nods. "Yes. You did."

John thinks, _He's trying_, _he really is. _And it's not easy, but he manages a smile and says brightly, "I'll make us some tea."

Sherlock is still in his chair when his flatmate returns. John presses a mug into his hands, and steps back to survey the cartons. They've all been neatly labelled, and not by a Holmesian hand. Idly, he wonders whether they were packed by Mycroft's assistant. _Wonder if she'll go through _my _things after I die. _He shudders briefly at the thought, and glances back at his flatmate. "We should really—"

"For God's sake, John. Don't look like a maiden aunt. It's fine. Open a few, if it will make you twitch less."

"You've got nothing to hide, then?" John asks with a startled laugh, because Sherlock is rather territorial about his things, and then he stops. _Oh, but you did. And I gave it away...to your self-proclaimed archenemy._

He is seized with an urge to confess, and has very nearly opened his mouth to begin, when something else catches his eye. "I've found your skull," he says, and he tears open the cardboard flaps as if it's Christmas. "Your other friend."

It grins up at him from a bed of socks, and as he reaches in to retrieve it, his fingers brush against a plastic dry-cleaner's bag folded underneath. Of course. _Skull. Socks. Winter. _Carefully, he sets the skull on the table in front of its owner, and steels himself for what lies beneath.

Silly, really. It's just a coat, and now it is clean. No blood there. Only well-worn dark tweed, a bit of red thread, and an absurd number of buttons. He lifts the slippery, surprisingly heavy parcel out without a word, and deposits it in Sherlock's lap. If his hand slips a little, if it brushes against his friend's arm in doing so, it is only a tiny ritual of personal reassurance. He doesn't think the other man notices.

Sherlock tears away the plastic with eager hands and immediately winces. "It smells all wrong," he remarks plaintively. "He didn't—No. It's mine, all right. He's only gone and had it cleaned."

"A few crime scenes should take care of that," John says, and then falters. "Sorry."

Sherlock smiles a little, and says, "Don't be." He touches the skull lightly between the eyes with one long finger and adds, cryptically, "He never does anything without a reason."

"Well. It was a bit...covered in human blood." John swallows.

"What? No. Look around you, John. I meant all of this." Sherlock waves his hand towards the boxes, and then refolds the coat over the back of his chair. "I think...Yes. All this was just the vanguard. We can expect a visit from Mycroft next." He gets to his feet, and yawns. "I suppose I'd better put some proper clothes on."

John laughs. "Oh, I don't know. You could wrap up in a bed sheet. Although you'd better keep your pyjamas on underneath this time. I think it's raining."

Sherlock snorts, and then frowns. "I suppose he's also taken our ashtray back. He would."

"I shall be quite disappointed if he has. It was so distinctly _regal."_

John is still smiling as he clears away the remains of the garment bag. On impulse, he sniffs at the coat. It's a bit harsh, a bit chemical. No hint of wet dog, of smoke, of coffee, of pine or antiseptic.

The car arrives fifteen minutes later. Sherlock is neatly dressed, and John has located his phone in among the sofa cushions. The consulting detective spins about the room as if he's forgotten something, and then seizes his coat. It _is_ raining, after all.

"Coming?" he asks, thrusting his arms into the sleeves, eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Oh _God,_ yes," John says, and does his best not to tumble down the stairs. Someone's probably done a murder, and it's fantastic.

* * *

**5: Excursive**

He's sprinting through the rain, and it feels incredible. It's certainty and freedom and mischief threading like fire through his veins. He has to slow himself a little, focussing on the sodden squish of water in his shoes, each pavement stone a unit of measurement beneath his feet.

It will not do to be seen as anything other than this: a man out for a run in the rain. It's healthful exercise, he thinks, and laughs a little at the thought as he approaches the deserted alley. _That's all it is, Officer. I'm just a simple tourist, out for a run. No harm in that, is there?_

It looms ahead of him, slick concrete higher than his head. Heart pounding, he abandons all pretence and throws himself at the wall, fast as he can. No one sees him now, and if they do? They'll never catch him.

* * *

Mycroft is waiting for them in the car. John watches his eyes slide over his brother, lingering for a moment on the familiar coat before he nods and says, "Well."

_Well, what?_ John thinks, but Sherlock is folding himself into the car already, positively vibrating with excitement. "Not the Yard?" he asks, as John slides into the leather upholstery beside him.

"No. Under the circumstances, I thought it best to avoid the media. They've established quite an encampment there."

Sherlock nods. "Yet you've decided to let me out of my kennel ahead of schedule. This _is _interesting."

"I'd still appreciate it if you exercised the utmost discretion," Mycroft says.

The car is moving by now, and John cannot help but feel that he's missed something incredibly vital. "Sorry, but where exactly are we going?" His anticipation has been dampened slightly by the sense that, once again, the Holmes brothers have left him in the dark.

"That's not terribly important."

"Which means you're not going to say. Right. Who are we going to see, then?"

"Detective Inspector Lestrade."

"Does he know?" John asks, waving a hand towards Sherlock, whose hungry eyes are fixed on the streets of his city rushing by outside the tinted window.

Mycroft sighs and folds his hands together primly over one knee. "I have informed him."

_Better you than me,_ John thinks. He's considered starting that conversation with Greg a thousand times, but always falters when it comes to the actual words. Now Mycroft has done it for him. Sometimes he wonders what it would have been like to see Sherlock _not dead_ without any warning, without adrenaline and necessity. Perhaps this is a kindness, really.

"Is it about that dead swimmer?" he asks Mycroft after a long silence, because Sherlock, as usual, already seems to know everything. This is somewhat surprising, because he'd declared the Games "boring" not long after suffering through the televised opening ceremonies. Reports of Jack Cutter's death had sparked a momentary interest, but after shouting at the newsreaders' endless speculations and enduring a mawkish tribute programme, he'd enforced a brief media blackout and taken up culinary research.

"There have been three deaths now, but yes."

Sherlock turns away from his intense appraisal of London and raises an eyebrow. "Three. Isn't _that_ embarrassing."

"Yes. And the Games are now perilously close to cancellation as a result. My time has become a precious commodity."

_What a shame you've wasted some of it falsifying a job application,_ John thinks fleetingly, but instead he asks, "Were all of the murders athletes?"

"Two were. Jack Cutter, and a German fencer." Mycroft does not contradict his use of the term "murder."

"But the third was not." Sherlock states, all confidence. "Still someone connected with the Games, though."

"A Chinese gymnastics coach," Mycroft affirms. "Her death has added to the general confusion."

"Because..." John prompts, wishing someone would get to the point.

"Obvious, really." When John meets this with a questioning look, Sherlock continues. "Unexpected heart failures after competition? I trust the German did die after his event? Of course he did. Clearly, use of a performance enhancing drug is indicated."

"Ah. Something like EPO? So there's a new substance that isn't coming out in the tests, and it's dangerous?" John asks, surprised Sherlock hasn't already dismissed this as predictably dull.

"Mmm," he hums in the affirmative. "But did the German win his match, I wonder?" Sherlock does look interested, almost pleased. A year ago, he probably would have told his brother to sort this himself. Now, he looks like a child who has been promised a trip to the zoo. _On second thought, make that a particularly horrifying medical museum, _John amends internally.

"He did not," Mycroft contributes. "He was bested by a Korean."

"So. One top seeded athlete. One who was not, and who performed accordingly. Finally, a coach, associated with a rather successful gymnastics team." His eyes narrow speculatively.

"Why would a coach take a drug meant to enhance athletic performance?" John wonders.

"Why, indeed." Sherlock rubs absently at his collar, as if he mourns the loss of his scarf. It could be in a box, but it suddenly occurs to his friend that it might have been irretrievably ruined._The blood._

"The coach's daughter is a member of the current Chinese gymnastics team," Mycroft interjects smoothly. They have arrived in front of a sad-looking building with a large and weathered "Offices To Let" banner tethered to the facade. "Ah. This is where I leave you."

* * *

It seems they are to meet in an office on the fifth floor. Without spoken agreement, they use the stairs, rather than the lift. John finds himself racing to keep up with Sherlock, who takes the steps two at a time, coat billowing behind him.

"Wait," John says, catching at one tweed sleeve as they arrive on the final landing and Sherlock reaches for the heavy, institutional-beige door.

"What?"

"Just...go easy."

Sherlock's brow furrows. "Because he believed I was dead."

"Well. Yes."

The consulting detective gazes back at him for a moment, lips parted as if to speak, and then nods, silently. He pulls the door handle, and John belatedly realises Sherlock has moved aside and is holding it open for him. _I suppose I've just set myself up for this,_ he thinks, and steps out into the hallway.

The door they're looking for is quite close, unlabelled except for the number. John contemplates knocking, a bit disconcerted by Sherlock looming just behind him, and ultimately opts to enter without fanfare. There's a barren looking reception desk, and behind it, a modest number of dove-coloured cubicles in a very large space littered with exposed cables and disassembled furniture.

"Ah...Hello?" John asks, his voice echoing oddly in the void.

"Back here," a familiar voice calls, and they round the corner, following the sound.

Greg Lestrade is seated at an ugly flat pack desk, a neat stack of folders assembled before him on the chipped imitation-oak surface. He looks awful, eyes bagged and complexion grey beneath his summer tan.

"Greg," John says, all-too aware of the tall dark silence at his back.

The DI nods, one hand braced against the desk, and says, roughly, "Yeah." His eyes run over Sherlock and back again.

John feels caught outside of time as the two men regard one another, Sherlock scanning for detail, the DI establishing his reality. It is, he thinks, to Greg's credit that he says, at last, "All right."

Sherlock makes a noncommittal sound—he is not terribly conversant in the language of _all right_, after all—and assembles himself in one of the two chairs opposite the desk. "You needed me. I'm here."

Lestrade shakes his head. "So you are. And we'll talk about that later. At the moment, though, yes. I have a problem."

Reassured that there will not be an explosive event in the immediate future, John seats himself in the remaining chair. One of the casters seems to be damaged, and he lurches slightly upon descent.

"What've you got?" Sherlock asks, fingers stretching eagerly towards the folders.

Lestrade flattens his own hand over them possessively. "What do you already know?"

There is an air of tension in the room, and John supposes it's inevitable. Sherlock recites the known facts of the case quickly, and can't entirely suppress his impatience. His delivery is, however, unusually free from sarcasm or jibes at the Yard's expense.

The DI listens, nodding and occasionally contributing unpublicised tidbits of data where appropriate - estimated time of death, location, and the like. When Sherlock is finished, he says, "I know it seems like a fairly open-and-shut case of athletic doping, but it isn't, is it?"

"No," Sherlock agrees, and reaches for the folders again. This time, Lestrade capitulates and pushes them across the desk. There are three: one for each victim.

"How's your German?" Lestrade asks, as John edges his chair closer, ripping the broken caster over the carpet in awkward starts.

_"Ausreichend." _He flips through the contents of the first folder, stops at a photograph of Jack Cutter's body for a moment, and then sets the folder down again with the ghost of a smirk.

"What?" John asks, but Sherlock is now poring over the scan of a crumpled handwritten note enclosed in Werner Achen's folder. _German._ Of course.

"Ah. Interesting." He glances at John and says, "You should be able to get _this_ one."

"I...okay." He gives up the chair as a bad job, and stands to accept the letter. "I don't _know_ German," he begins, but then he stops, studying the handwriting. He feels an irrational surge of pride in himself as he ventures, "Oh. Well, I _think _he might have been left-handed. But he wrote this with his right hand."

"Precisely." He hands the page to John, eagerly leafing forwards to the photographs.

_Ich habe etwas getan, das vielleicht sehr unklug war. Je mehr ich darüber nachdenke, desto klarer wird mir, dass ich es nicht hätte tun sollen. Es ist mir das Wichtigste im Leben geworden, und das sollte es nicht sein. Das hättest Du sein müssen. Gewinnen ist nicht wirklich wichtig, oder?_

_Vielleicht passiert nichts, und mit mir wird alles gut. Mit uns wird alles gut, und dann zerreiße ich das hier. Aber wenn nicht... wenn mir irgendetwas zustößt, verzeih mir bitte. Ich liebe Dich._

_-Werner_

"So...this letter. Was this written to his wife or girlfriend, then?"

"Wife," Lestrade interjects. "We found it folded up in his shaving kit."

"Sorry, the only bit I can pick out is that he loved someone," John says. "So. What's the rest of it?"

Sherlock looks up from the post-mortem photograph he's studying. "Ah. He... says he is apologetic because he has done something that might have been stupid. He was obsessed with winning, and that was wrong; his wife was more important. He says that possibly nothing will happen, that things will be fine..." He stops, and corrects himself. "No. Between _them, _everything will be fine, and if so, then he'll simply tear it up. But if not, he begs forgiveness. And yes, he does say, 'I love you.' The whole thing is a touch melodramatic."

"Did he fence left-handed?" John asks.

"No. And it's a pity. _That_ might have improved his performance. It's clear from his musculature that he did not." Sherlock shuts the folder and opens the third. "So. Two people living lies. What's next, I wonder?"

"What do you mean?" Lestrade asks, leaning forward. "Assuming you're talking about Werner Achen's dominant hand...What was Jack Cutter lying about?"

But Sherlock isn't listening. He's engrossed in the final folder. "I'd like to talk to the daughter."

Lestrade shakes his head. "Jack Cutter," he persists.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. "Almost certainly irrelevant. Liu Jie's _daughter,_ on the other hand, might be important."

"You said he lied about something," the other man insists.

"Did I?" One corner of his mouth turns up, slightly, and he adds, "Sorry. I think it would be more accurate to say he lied about almost _everything."_

* * *

**6: Here Comes the Sun**

Sherlock's good temper doesn't last very long. They're back at Baker Street now, and he's sprawled on the sofa, staring at the ceiling with his head tilted at an odd angle, as if he's hoping to be able to see around a metaphysical corner. Lestrade's folders are neatly stacked on his chest, and his fingers hover, twitching, just above them. They never quite manage to make contact. It's excruciating to behold.

John is bunched up in his chair with his laptop, not really looking at an email from Harry. Somehow, this day has been derailed, and it's a shame because it had started off so well. Despite the stack of paperwork sliding incrementally further down the consulting detective's chest with every dramatic sigh, they've got very little information to go on. Worse yet, it doesn't look as if they'll be able to visit a crime scene any time soon. Interviews can be arranged, and eventually they will be, but apparently Lestrade's arrangement with Mycroft did not extend to letting them anywhere near the public.

He isn't terribly surprised when a folder hits the wall, releasing a modest avalanche of A4 in its wake. It's almost glorious the way the next projectile folder bounces off the wall and then slides into one of Sherlock's many boxes with most of its contents intact. "I think you've made a possible goal there," he ventures, "only I'm not certain about the scoring conventions for folder flinging."

There is an explosive snort from the sofa, and a flurry of limbs as Sherlock rotates to assume a position virtually identical to the one he was lying in before, only this time with his feet hooked over the opposing arm rest. He is slightly impeded in this by the bulk of his coat, which he hasn't bothered to remove. Once he is arranged to his satisfaction, he begins running his fingers slowly and repeatedly over the points of his shirt collar as if he's seriously considering self-strangulation. After a moment, he addresses the ceiling: "Suppose you wanted to sneak into the Olympic Village. How would you go about it?"

John shuts his laptop. "You mean, if I were planning to sabotage the Games?"

"No, just generally," Sherlock grates between clenched teeth, and presses his face into his own contorted woollen shoulder. John is still working out whether his answer was intended sarcastically when he slams his head back against the cushion and adds, "It's no good asking for my help if I'm not allowed to see anything that matters!"

And of course, this is perfectly true.

John opens his laptop and reads an enlightening (if somewhat salacious) article detailing popular forms of recreation in the Olympic Village. It does not contain any helpful information about sneaking into the grounds, although it does make him want to steal a peek at the women's volleyball teams again. Resisting this impulse, he virtuously reads two separate articles describing Jack Cutter in lengthy and stunningly contradictory terms: introvert/extrovert; striking/hideous; beloved/despised. He is momentarily sidetracked by another article describing pre-competition rituals and nervous tics observed in various athletes. While the swimmer is mentioned here as well, it doesn't explain Sherlock's cryptic remarks about the man. Finally, he gives in to curiosity and says, "So. What were you implying about Jack Cutter?"

Rather than insisting that this information is not terribly pertinent to the case, as he had done with Lestrade, Sherlock surprises John by immediately heaving himself into a sitting position. He fixes his flatmate with a frighteningly avid expression and says, "How much do you want to know?"

"Er...All of it, I suppose," John ventures, trying to decide whether this sudden interest is a positive sign or a storm warning.

Sherlock rolls his eyes at this, but not very stormily. "No. What's the information worth to you?"

"Well, I'm only wondering because you've made such a mystery of it! We're not in prison. I'm not going to go buy you a pa-" John stops himself, aware that he's come perilously close to mentioning a Certain Thing that a Certain Person has been awfully, _surprisingly_ good about Not Doing.

In the awkward pause that follows, Sherlock strikes, pale eyes glittering. "If you're insisting on bribery, what about a drink?"

John boggles at him as if he's expressed an interest in football. "A what? No. You don't drink. Well. You almost never... _Why_ do you want a drink? Is this a code? What do you mean?"

"I mean," Sherlock says, slowly, and with chillingly false nonchalance, "I find myself in need of a change of venue. I need to immerse myself in the brotherhood of man." Before John can object to this ludicrous statement, he holds up a hand and adds, theatrically, "Obviously, I would _never_ suggest we go somewhere where we could be recognised easily by a member of the public."

"It hasn't been _that_ long. You're fairly memorable."

"Mmm." It's not a disagreement. "I could wear a disguise. We could find a place that neither of us have ever been to, and go there. There are always new pubs springing up in London. Find us one of them."

John sets his laptop on the floor so he can cross his arms forbiddingly. "Why a pub?"

"Because, much as it pains me to say it again, pubs are full of _people_, John. A staggering panorama of admittedly dull human beings assembled in dim lighting conditions, demonstrating impaired judgement and swapping feeble witticisms."

"You want to people-watch?"

"Not the expression I would have chosen, but yes. That."

John can feel himself beginning to acquiesce, and while he knows it's a terrible idea, the voice in his head (one that sounds suspiciously like the man he's already having an audible conversation with) asks _What are you afraid of?_ So he qualifies it. "This is to help you think?"

"Yes." Sherlock is poised on the edge of the sofa, as if awaiting the crack of a starting pistol.

"It can't be too near the flat, though," John says, belatedly aware that stipulations imply consent. "Promise me you won't deduce people loudly or say something nasty to the server."

"Agreed. You choose the place. I've got to find something suitably pedestrian to wear."

"I didn't say yes," John sighs, but he reaches for his laptop, just the same. He hadn't said no.

* * *

It's large and not particularly nice, but it is reasonably new, reasonably priced, and the clientele are predominantly sport enthusiasts. Perhaps that explains the bewildering hodgepodge of weathered cricket bats, yellowed team photographs, and limp football scarves standing in for decor. Most eyes are fixed on the screens mounted over the bar, which are, predictably, replaying Olympic footage interspersed with interviews and commentary.

As it happens, the kitchen has shut down already, so John leaves Sherlock alone at their table and ventures away in search of simple crisps and beer. His progress towards the bar is slowed by packs of inconveniently tall and boisterous university students, so there is plenty of time to look around.

It takes Sherlock less than two minutes to find what he's looking for, but he merely makes a note to himself, a sort of bookmark, and resumes scanning the crowd. It won't do to show his hand too early.

By the time John returns with two pints and a packet of crisps carefully tucked under his arm, Sherlock has collected a series of minor deductions. Because it's something that entertains them both, because it's something they used to do together, these deductions form the basis of a game.

"What does the taller of the two women at the table behind me do for a living?" Sherlock inquires, _sotto voce,_ after a brief and companionable silence marred only by occasional shouts from the bar, televised applause, and the mastication of crisps.

John is well placed to have a good look at her without needing to be overt about it. Sherlock does not turn, having committed the physical details of the woman to memory several minutes ago. Instead, he watches John. "You've noticed her shoes," he says, tracking the motion of his eyes with approval. "Good."

"They're...clogs. Like the ones nurses wear, but more stylish. She's got a job that keeps her on her feet all day. And she's, ah, she's wearing black clothes that don't really suit her. Some sort of uniform?"

"Near enough. Look at her hands."

"They're...well, she hasn't got long fingernails. Her friend does. Is that what you mean?"

"What else?"

"Hm. I—Her hair's very blonde."

"Oh, brilliant, John. She _is_ very blonde. Happily for you, that's not entirely irrelevant." Sherlock crunches the final crisp between his teeth and savours the sting of salt-and-vinegar (_sodium chloride-and-acetic acid_) on his tongue. In equal measure, he does _not_ enjoy the gritty, greasy film the crisps have left behind on his hands.

John pours the remaining crumbs at the bottom of the bag into his own hand, and then licks it clean like a small, tidy mammal of some sort, frowning away into the distance over Sherlock's shoulder.

"Oh!" he exclaims at last.

"Have you got it?"

"I think so."

"And?"

"Hairdresser," John states with perfect confidence, and takes a triumphant swig of beer as punctuation.

It's the correct answer, and Sherlock feels a touch of proprietary pride in his friend's success. He wonders if John has caught all of the finer details: her chapped hands; the thin, streaking stain of chemical dye on her right forearm, delineating the point where her disposable gloves ceased to protect her flesh; the faint constellation of short, fine hairs clinging to her trouser legs...

John sets his glass down again and adds, "I know I'm right. The jig was up the moment she started examining the ends of her friend's hair in a suspiciously professional way."

"You are." Sherlock rubs his fingertips together. He's unwilling to go down the hall to scrub them clean just yet, because he has another mission to accomplish first. Having abraded them over an inadequately sized bar napkin to little result, he now rubs them against his own denim-encased legs. "_The jig was up,_ though, John? Really?"

He shrugs, unrepentant. "I did rather well, didn't I? Now you. What about the friend?"

"If I tell you she's a journalist—and she _is,_ of course—can you guess which awful rag she scribbles for?"

"Well. She's got too much makeup on, and that dress doesn't suit her. But that doesn't really help me, you know."

Rather than admit that he doesn't know, either (although it would be—_will be_—easy enough to find out when the time comes), Sherlock takes a small sip of bitter. At his current rate of consumption, it will take him approximately three hours to finish.

John's own pint is half gone already. "I know it's wrong," he ventures, hunching conspiratorially, over the glossy, slightly damp Formica table, "but the temptation to go over there right now and just...say something stupid to her, just to get this all over with, is painfully strong."

"It would solve one of our more annoying problems," Sherlock allows, surprised and pleased that John has arrived at this position so quickly, "but it lacks a certain something."

"Oh, I know," he agrees. "Mycroft. He'd have me killed for breaking your cover."

"Not just you." _So John doesn't like this skulking about any more than I do. Of course he doesn't. Good._

"I've considered anonymous telephone calls to the papers, unusually explicit graffiti, old-fashioned postcards, or simply writing my sister Harry an email with the subject heading, _Guess What? He's Back_," John continues. "All easily traced back to us, I'm afraid."

"Something with plausible deniability would be best," Sherlock agrees. Vocally, at least.

John gazes off towards the screens above the bar. Abruptly reminded of his original reason for agreeing to this excursion, he turns back and fixes a stern look on Sherlock. "So. We're here. You have a drink that you are not, in fact, drinking. You've had plenty of time to deduce people and dismiss them as boring. When are you going to tell me about Jack Cutter?"

"I need to wash my hands." Because he really, _really_ does. But his _(insane, efficient, slightly dangerous)_ plan is burning a hole in his concentration. If he doesn't act soon, he'll probably be forced to do something worse. Waiting is pointless. John has practically given him consent already. He checks his previously bookmarked target near the bar, and thinks, _That's the one. Definitely. Yes._

John tilts his head at him, forehead lightly furrowed, and then shuts his eyes momentarily in resignation. "Fine. Wash your hands. When you come back, you're telling me."

"Fine." Sherlock slides out of his seat. He considers leaving his cap behind in a gesture of good faith, but no: it's part of his horrid disguise. He slouches away towards the toilets without a backwards glance.

It's still very crowded, and as he makes his way towards the end of the hall labelled "Gents," he becomes suddenly, painfully aware that the last time he was near this many people, he was also pretending to be someone else. Ronald Adair, to be precise.

Only, of course, that time _(those times)_, he had been somewhat (fine—_incredibly)_ high. As he is buffeted about by customers and servers, he cannot help but feel a certain inappropriate nostalgia. He'd been miserable, of course, but also beautifully insulated from the rest of humanity, wrapped as he was in a golden, chemical glow. People's voices weren't so shrill. He didn't feel a faint and distasteful layer of grime coating every surface he touched.

His skin is definitely crawling. Has he managed to make himself worse by thinking about it? Does it matter?

Finally, he arrives at the door, admonishing himself for affecting a completely unnecessary limp as part of his nameless character. As he reaches for the handle, another man comes barreling through at high speed and rams his face directly into his right shoulder.

The stranger is shorter than he is, as many people are, and ginger in a pale rabbity sort of way. When he apologises, it is immediately clear that he is Irish. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't looking!" he exclaims. "I haven't hurt you, have I?" He's got a faint red mark on the bridge of his nose, clearly the point of impact.

"No, I'm all right," Sherlock very carefully does _not_ snap at him, making his own voice sound blandly Estuary without any effort at all. "I should have been more careful."

The Irishman crinkles nervous, surprisingly dark eyes at him, and rabbits away down the hall with a final murmured "Sorry."

Sherlock continues onwards into the empty lavatory, and tries to shake off the abrupt and terrifying sense of _disposability_ that their encounter has just evoked in him. He is painfully aware of his own fragility, although he has not been injured. His oversized grey hoodie is not as thick as his preferred coat, but the bruise will be small, if there is one. He should be fine. He isn't.

There are three cold white sinks in a tidy row. He chooses the one furthest from the door, and succumbs to the wave of vertigo that has been threatening to engulf him since he started down the hallway. Hands braced against the porcelain, he presses his face against the cold _(filthy)_, condensation-spotted glass of the mirror, willing his hammering heart to slow down.

He smells something burning.

That makes no sense. It isn't cigarette smoke, which would not be completely unexpected, if forbidden, in a public toilet. It's a scent that is typically categorised under _Kitchen._

_Burnt toast._ _What does that mean?_

His lip twitches mirthlessly as he suddenly remembers an article he read detailing the warning signs of a stroke. That would be an ignominious end, to say the least.

Not that. Definitely not that.

Why toast? Why, also, is that paired with ammonia and something..._oily_ in his memory?

_Don't be stupid._

He closes his eyes for a second, and with the momentary darkness comes the faintest whisper of a sentence. It's spoken in a strange, almost featureless voice:

_The doctor is next._

He should be able to place the words, the voice, but he cannot.

He feels a very tangible but also completely unidentifiable alarm, so he opens his eyes. He scrubs his hands under the tap with some lumpily dispensed soap, and makes his way back through the crowd towards the bar, adrenaline quickening his steps.

It's time to start a fight.

* * *

John had followed Sherlock's passage through the crowd with interest, admiring his artfully bent posture and oddly shadowed face—honestly, the man was not made to wear hats—and rolling his eyes at the subtle limp he's apparently decided to give himself. It had better not be based on John's. _Which is completely gone now,_ he reminds himself. _I suppose he's welcome to it._

He entertains himself by glancing around the pub. Only it is not, in fact, all that entertaining, and he's not in the mood to play the Deduction Game without his flatmate. Not the one they _had_ been playing, at any rate. Because he's more than certain the man is up to something. All the signs have pointed to this: his restlessness, his rapid vacillation between interest and disinterest in his surroundings, the way his fingers writhed and drummed around his mostly neglected pint glass. Oh, and the way he kept stalling when he could be impressing John with his knowledge about Jack Cutter.

Add to this the fact that Sherlock has been cooped up for weeks, thwarted by both Mycroft and Lestrade, and that he has now wilfully subjected himself to the sort of environment he loathes on general principle... Yes, all the signs point to him doing something spectacularly stupid. He simply won't tolerate being separated from evidence he can use to solve a case. Given their location, it doesn't take much thought to identify the sort of thing he has in mind.

John hastily swallows the rest of his lager and glances back towards the hall. He should have returned by now. He's only washing his hands. How long can that, _should_ that, take?

By the time he has crushed the last napkin into a small, sodden cube, he spots the lanky greyish figure he's been expecting. He's slinking towards the bar, but his posture and gait have changed since the last time John saw him; he's a little bit taller, a little bit faster. Still not quite himself, at least. There might be time to stop him.

Unless John is part of the plan? He's not sure. He does, however, suspect that he has inadvertently given Sherlock some sort of implied permission.

Oh god. He has.

That means he is _definitely_ part of the plan.

_Fuck._

Quietly and unobtrusively, he slides out of his seat and begins walking towards the bar himself.

Sherlock has threaded his way over to a man standing behind a bar stool. He's of average height and medium build, brown-haired, rugby-shirted. He has his hand draped possessively over the shoulder of the woman seated in front of him. John watches in faint horror as Sherlock insinuates himself into the narrow space beside him with easy grace and leans over (a bit too close, really, even if it is rather loud) to whisper something in the other man's ear. He has also—_oh god_—removed his cloth cap and stuffed it into his back pocket.

Whatever he has said can't have been good. The man at the bar backs away, and even in the flickering lights of the television screens, it's clear his face is reddening with anger.

Sherlock also steps back, hands lifted in a placating gesture. He's saying something, but John can't quite hear the words. He is, however, extremely worried about the smile on Sherlock's face. It should be apologetic, to go with the hands, but it really isn't. He has thought himself reasonably familiar with his flatmate's repertoire of strange smiles, but this isn't one he can place from personal experience.

It does not appear to help, or perhaps that's the point. Sherlock shrugs, and turns away. John's quite close now, and he thinks he sees him counting under his breath.

If this were a film, now would come the bit where John says Sherlock's name loudly and urgently, thus conveniently blowing his cover. It's really not a name that other people have. Unfortunately, it's Real Life, which means that no one is under any obligation to act predictably. It's quite clear from the angry man's posture and the bottle in his hand that he is going to try something a bit nastier than simply shoving Sherlock into the bar or calling him a twat.

John doesn't hesitate. He launches himself forward, not at the man with the uplifted bottle, but at Sherlock, who is closer. It's a good tackle, but not without its faults. They take out two university students and a drinks tray. This is messy, but infinitely better than a crushed skull.

"You weren't supposed to do that," Sherlock remarks gently, after they've correctly identified and separated their limbs.

The man with the bottle is shouting obscenities at a member of the staff, who are, in turn, threatening to call the police. John has plenty of time to assess their injuries. His _own_ injury, to be precise, because he has managed to plant the palm of his hand in a sizeable shard of glass while pulling himself off of Sherlock. Everyone else appears to be just fine.

"He was going to bash your head in. What did you _say_ to him?" he hisses, gratefully accepting Sherlock's offer of a blood-staunching stack of napkins.

"I told him I liked his shirt."

John snorts a little as he presses them against his hand and watches the red seeping up through the layers. "Really."

"It's _possible_ that I implied an unwelcome degree of familiarity," Sherlock concludes, and straightens up, all subterfuge abandoned. He may be wringing out the beer-drenched remains of a charity hoodie, but there's really no mistaking who and what he is.

"Mr. Holmes," says a pleasant voice, and John looks away from his brilliantly idiotic friend and up into the familiar, slightly amused brown eyes of Jeff, one of Mycroft's men-without-surname. He's turned out very nicely in a dark suit, which (along with his glowing earpiece) strongly suggests that he's on duty. He proves this by firmly and pleasantly suggesting they accompany him out of the pub. No one seems to object to this except for Sherlock.

"I beg your pardon?" he begins, raising a haughty eyebrow, but John jabs him in the ribs with his good hand.

"Shut up! We know him." He smiles apologetically at Jeff, and then, more generally, at everyone else, and follows both men towards the exit. As they near the door, he stops.

The young woman from the newspaper is standing frozen beside an incongruously tropical artificial tree, her mobile clutched in one pink-taloned hand. "Sorry," he says. "My friend told me you're a reporter. You _are,_ aren't you?"

She blinks startled, mascara-crusted lashes at him. "Oh! Yes. Jane Ellis. _The Sun."_

"John Watson," he says cordially, only just stopping himself from offering her his bloody-napkined hand. He's fairly certain that would be considered bad etiquette. "I don't know if you're interested, only that man over there is Sherlock Holmes."

"Is he?" she says, clearly torn between shock and professional interest.

"If you don't know who that is, try Googling him," John suggests, with a warm smile, and turns to go. Sherlock and Jeff appear to be arguing on the pavement outside, which can't bode well for the future.

"Wait!" she calls. "Can you tell me what has just happened?"

"I couldn't possibly comment," he says, and does his best to leg it towards the open door with dignity.

* * *

**7: Full Fathom Five**

He trudges back to his hotel by the longest possible route, each footfall an accusation.

Where on earth was his head? Running headlong into someone like that in the pub...That was stupid. Well, and he shouldn't have been _in_ that pub to begin with, should he?

_The correct answer, old thing, is _no.

His throbbing face will serve as a reminder to remain focussed for the next few days. Because a promise is a promise, and he's committed himself to this one now. It's not the sort of deal a man can renege upon.

_Run home, you fool, and try to avoid the urge to pretend you're normal. Because it never, ever fucking works, does it?_

No. It never does.

* * *

They've become accustomed to perceiving the long black cars of the British Government as a sort of well-camouflaged environmental feature; something that suddenly separates itself from its surroundings as if it has been there all along, waiting. Tonight, this illusion has been shattered by the local parking situation.

John finds himself in the unenviable position of struggling down a badly-paved alley after two taller men who are loping along at a rapid pace whilst conducting an argument. His hand hurts like a bastard, he's in danger of losing his makeshift bandage, and he has overheard something alarming about not being able to return home tonight and "someone will bring you your things."

Sherlock is industriously filling the momentary pauses in Jeff's dogged explanation of the situation with a colourful and extremely energetic diatribe addressing Mycroft's taxonomical classification, his dress sense, and general intellect. It's impressive, but it's not helpful. By the time John nearly breaks an ankle on an unexpected chunk of concrete, he has had more than enough.

"**STOP!"** he bellows, in his loudest, most commanding voice, clutching his bloody hand to his chest.

Gratifyingly, they do. It is distinctly _less_ gratifying when Jeff coughs apologetically and says, "The car's just here, actually."

And so it is, gently gleaming at the side of the street just ahead. So perhaps it _does_ have some sort of stealth capability.

"Fantastic," John says. 'So. Let's do a quick version, before either of us gets into this car. Do I understand that we are now going away together, unexpectedly?"

"Yes," Jeff confirms, glancing anxiously over his shoulder. A few people from the pub, including Jane Ellis of the _Sun,_ appear to be moving rather quickly in their direction.

"Do we have a choice?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Okay. I see that," he agrees, as a tinted window descends and a man with a shaved head regards them with an air of well-polished professional menace.

"John," Sherlock begins, urgently touching his arm. "We could—"

"Best not, Sherlock." John cuts him off, quite firmly. He nods at Jeff. "Fine."

"Fine?" Sherlock repeats, incredulous. "_Fine?"_

"Get in the car, Sherlock." He makes his way towards the vehicle. He is suddenly feeling extremely tired.

* * *

It's not a very good hotel. Their window has a commanding view of a stained brick wall and a neighbouring rooftop adorned with the deposits of an impressively prolific and well-fed dynasty of pigeons. Apparently the rusty spikes weren't much of a deterrent.

"Well, this _is_ nice," Sherlock remarks drily, flopping down on one of the forbiddingly polyester-shrouded beds. The springs makes a tragic groaning sound. "What lovely pea-green hessian walls."

John flexes his hand experimentally, thankful that Jeff's medical kit had been so very well-stocked. "I can't imagine there are many rooms available on short notice right now. After all, the Olympics are going on."

"Yes," Sherlock muses, eyes aglow with anticipation. "And tomorrow, we'll finally get to _do_ something."

"Right. Because, once again, you've managed to get exactly what you wanted by underhanded means." John opens one of his bags—but it's not his; only the contents are. _This_ bag is much nicer than anything he owns—and rifles through it in search of a clean shirt. He'd tried to avoid getting blood everywhere, but it's really difficult to apply direct pressure, elevate a bleeding wound, _and_ flee the paparazzi.

"Underhanded?"

"Yes." He strips off his shirt and pulls on a clean tee, trying not to think about the fact that someone had to have rummaged through all of his bedroom drawers in record time to make this possible. "I knew you were up to something, but would it have killed you to share your plan before things got dangerous?"

"You got there eventually."

"Just in the nick of time, I think you'll find." He locates his toothbrush in a small waterproof bag, and sidles into the bathroom. The door is prevented from opening fully due to its close proximity with the bed. "Or were you hoping for a new personal best in consecutive concussions?"

"Anyway, you agreed it was necessary. We weren't getting anywhere with the investigation while we were trapped in the flat."

John, mouth brimming with minty foam, does not deign to answer this.

"Don't think for a moment that my dear brother wasn't ready with a contingency plan. I was just bumping things up the timetable a bit. He still gets to control everything. He should be pleased."

John spits, runs a damp cloth over his face, and emerges. "Yes, well. I'm not so sure he'll see it in the same light. And while I _may_ have indicated that I agreed it was time we stopped hiding, I could probably have done without the melodrama. I just...I just wish you'd actually _said_ something before involving me in one of your mad schemes again."

Sherlock is now clad in pyjamas, but is otherwise sprawled in much the same position he'd assumed when they first arrived. John considers searching for his own sleepwear, but decides he's too tired to bother. He can sleep in his pants and shirt. It won't be the first time. He takes off his jeans, somewhat clumsily with his wounded hand, starts to pull back the covers, and stops.

"Do you think..." He glances meaningfully at the door to their room.

"Without a doubt," Sherlock answers, not bothering to interrupt his survey of the ceiling.

John pulls the door open anyway, abruptly revealing the man he has privately christened _Big Bad Bald Bloke. _"Ah. Yes. That answers that." He closes the door again, makes a brief detour to draw the curtains, and climbs into bed. "To continue our discussion, though...Your actual method left much to be desired."

"How so?" Sherlock asks, abruptly snapping off the light switch mounted in the wall between their beds.

"Well, for one thing, it was unnecessarily reckless. Picking a fight like that. Was I supposed to stop you before he caved your head in?"

"You did, though."

"Yes, and my throbbing hand wishes I hadn't."

"Take a paracetamol."

"I already have. No thanks to you." John scowls into his pillow, wondering what, precisely, he means to accomplish. Here, in the darkness, he feels as if the hundreds of times they've had a variant of this conversation in the past have all bled together into one. And while it's _familiar_ (and arguably, much better than actually _missing_ these fruitless conversations because Sherlock is dead), it's still very frustrating.

"Would it make any difference if I apologised?"

"Maybe. No. Probably not. Just...try to _think _next time_."_

There is a light, derisive snort from the other bed.

"You know what I mean. Think about your own _safety. _Because you don't, do you?"

"I was prepared to dodge."

"Balls, you were." John presses his uninjured hand against his eyes until he sees sparks, and continues onward. He can't seem to stop. "I realise I _may_ have misunderstood you in all the insanity, but I seem to recall you saying that he was angry because..." Because, _damn it._

"Because I rather crudely propositioned him?" Sherlock suggests, with brazen ease.

"Well. Yes. That."

"It was quite effective, though, wasn't it?"

"How did you—" John cuts himself off. He'd prefer not to know, really. "No. My _point_ is, people like that..._._Well, _some_ people, react to that sort of thing with an irrational rage. And it makes them extremely dangerous."

Sherlock sighs, and in the dark, John can't tell whether it's due to exasperation or regret. "I _may_ have miscalculated to some extent..."

"I should certainly say you did."

"And you _have_." There is a rustling, thrashing sound from the other bed, which may or may not be Sherlock getting under his covers. Or turning his back on John, perhaps.

"I'm sorry," John says, after a lengthy silence. "Can't seem to stop sometimes."

"Mmm." Sherlock waits a moment, and then clears his throat. "Jack Cutter," he ventures, experimentally.

"Hmm?"

"Yes," Sherlock affirms, and John is suddenly aware that this is, in a sense, going to be his apology. "Jack Cutter," he continues, "was, in many ways, two entirely different people. You may have noticed that some of his characteristic behavioural patterns changed significantly after his father died. For example, he always used to cough and gag upon first contact with the water. It's almost as if he were afraid of being drowned. Ridiculous in a swimmer. But evidence suggests that this changed in May of 2011. Then there's his sudden departure from his intense training schedule after years of dedication..."

John closes his eyes, and inappropriately calmed by the rise and fall of Sherlock's voice recounting a horrifying and complicated tale of childhood abuse and exploitation, he eventually falls asleep.

* * *

After a while, Sherlock stops talking. He can hear the faint slow sounds of John's breath and knows he is asleep. It's oddly comforting.

He feels...not quite _guilt,_ as such, but regret. It occurs to him that the strange manifestation he'd experienced in the public toilet rattled him more than he was willing to admit. This, in turn, might have...Well, it might have impaired his judgement a bit later on. Offending people is a science in its own right. He really ought to be capable of judging how far is _too_ far.

Frowning, he rubs at the bump on his collarbone. His ability to offend others deliberately, or even _accurately_, is not the point. No matter what John has to say about it.

No. The important thing, the thing he really _must_ accomplish, is a reconstruction of the moment he'd had (or thought he'd had) while he was standing at that sink.

How did it begin?

He closes his eyes, which is fairly unnecessary, as it is remarkably dark with the curtain drawn, and takes himself back to the moment he walked through the open door. His heart was beating very fast, he reminds himself. By hyperventilating (quietly), he can probably replicate the feeling of panic to some extent. He raises his hand to his own throat, and feels his pulse accelerating as he does so.

Good.

So, his face. He'd pressed his face against the mirror. It was cold and wet. He remembered thinking it was filthy—_No, that's not relevant. _Cold and wet, then. And yes, also this: his eyes were closed, as they are now. His hands were braced on the porcelain sink, also cold...

It was at this point that he had smelled the burning toast, and the other things. The ammonia, mingled with oil. But he didn't really smell them, did he?

_Smell is the sense most strongly linked to memory. Linked to _emotionally charged _memory._

He suppresses the temptation to contemplate the intricate, little-understood interactions between the entorhinal cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. _Irrelevant._

So. The smell _was_ real, had been legitimately present at some point in time, but _not_ when he was standing at the sink. The scent _was _associated with him standing _with his eyes closed, hands on the—_No. His hands weren't...they didn't...

_He's standing, _yes, definitely standing. _His eyes are closed. His heart is racing. His face is pressed against the glass...His eyes are closed. He hears a voice..._

No.

_He cannot _see. _His face is pressed against the glass, and his—_Oh. His hands are against the glass. _Holding himself up. Holding himself _up _against the cold, wet, glass because he's _sliding down it.

Sliding down a _window._

_For a moment, I thought you were dead, all crumpled under the window and covered in blood and glass fragments. I thought you were dead and I had _killed _you. I thought—_

Not that. _Sliding._

_I saw you, slowly sliding down the window, and there he was, pointing a gun at your head. I thought, _Don't look—

Oh. Because John had said—

Sherlock opens his eyes with a start and realises he's tasting copper. He's not sure whether he has bitten through his lip...but oh, there it is, an almost imperceptible burn.

He lies still for a moment, slowing his heart down, breathing deliberately, and thinks, _I _do _know what that was. That was Sebastian Moran. He's the one who said _The doctor is—

No.

_You're not dead,_ he reminds himself, and stealthily climbs out of bed to rinse the taste of blood away.

* * *

"This tea is unbelievably bad," John calls through the closed bathroom door the next morning. Sherlock has been in there for a very long time. "Do you want to try the coffee?"

There's a muffled response, but it's unintelligible.

"Coffee! Do you want some?"

The door swings open, releasing a blast of humid air and Sherlock, still in pyjamas, looking pink-faced and annoyed. "Yes." He throws his sopping towel over the foot of his bed and announces, "The shower isn't working."

"Seriously? I've changed my mind. This _is_ intended as a punishment." John leaves his fellow prisoner alone with the electric kettle and goes to perform his morning ablutions.

As he shaves, he can hear Sherlock talking to someone in the background over the burr of the electric razor. "Your _intentions_ are perfectly clear...Even for you, a _punitive_ hotel room is impressive... Well, that's something, I suppose...Fine. _Yes,_ I know." There's an odd thumping sound, which is almost definitely that of a man hurriedly putting his shoes on with one hand. "I wasn't planning to."

John is greeted by the sight of Sherlock, completely (and faultlessly) dressed, throwing his smartphone onto his perfectly made-up bed in disgust. It bounces.

"Bad news?" he asks.

"Mycroft. We're off to the Olympic Village. Get your shoes on."

"So we're investigating."

"Finally, yes." Sherlock manages to spin in the space between the beds, scanning the room. It's an impressive feat. "We're to have a police escort, but it's better than nothing."

John finds a clean pair of socks and puts them on. He locates his shoes under the bed and is just tying them when there's a businesslike knock on their door. "Time to go?"

"Apparently," Sherlock agrees, bounding to the door in one stride and wrenching it open with a flourish.

There's a moment of unexpected, heavy silence.

John straightens up and takes in Sherlock, frozen with his hand on the doorknob, and just beyond him, the Big Bad Bald Bloke and an unfamiliar man in Metropolitan Police uniform. And just beyond that—

"Sergeant Donovan," Sherlock says, in a voice completely devoid of expression. "What an unexpected surprise."

* * *

**8: Regression Analysis**

They had told her already, of course. It's not as if she doesn't know what waits behind that hotel room door. It isn't precisely like a nightmare, waiting in that stale yellowed hallway for the longest seconds of her life, scrubbing her palms down her thighs, cold with shame and anger and an emotion she simply cannot name. It isn't precisely like that, but it's awfully close.

She can hear their voices, faintly, just within. John Watson's first—and she thinks, _I haven't seen him in a year—_saying something ending in a question. The answer is returned in a resonant voice, a good voice, actually; it always was _(just not the things he said)._ And there's a rustling sound and another question and an answer, and—

And Jones is looking at her, because she's stepped back, just looking blankly at the door, all cracks and scratches in the paint. Or maybe she never _had_ stepped forward; that's a possibility. She should be in the vanguard; she usually is. But she can't raise her hand, so it's left to poor Jones, who is very young and—no, not young, just...he doesn't _know. _He's got no idea what he's walking into. How could he?

He raps at the door, and there's a sort of gallop on the other side, and a fumble at the latch, which means it's going to open—

—with a rush, and he's a tall dark blur caught in mid-motion, the way she always sees him in memory _(only sometimes he's falling through a low-res sky on film)_ with a white white face and staring eyes that stop—he stops. He speaks; he says

"Sergeant Donovan. What an unexpected surprise."

He speaks, and he's certainly not dead, but his voice might as well be. He knows that she knows she practically _made_ him jump. She thought he'd lost his life due to her mistake, and he hasn't. He hasn't! It's Sally who has lost almost everything, instead—so she simply says, "Yes."

And as they go down the hall and towards the waiting car, it's not even his unearthly and unaccustomed silence that unnerves her: it's John Watson's accusatory eyes.

* * *

They're sitting in a sunny little conference room, awaiting Liu Fang's arrival.

Sally says, "They'll send her translator along. The Chinese insist. We think she's more of a guard, because the girl's English is really good."

"That will save time," The Freak says. "My Mandarin is not." As if it's worth saying.

"Thought you'd have had time to learn," Sally says. "When you were off pretending to be dead."

"Not really," he answers evenly. He does not elaborate.

"She's very clever. She is also very brave. Please don't say anything to upset her."

"I hadn't planned to." He gives her a level look, one that lasts far too long.

She shouldn't, but she does. Even now, after everything, the spiteful words just seem to happen. "Well, at least this witness won't scream when she sees you."

He says nothing, then. He doesn't bother to blink.

* * *

Liu Fang is quite short, which makes sense in a gymnast—Sally thinks she is under five feet tall—and again, she's impressed by how muscular she is, solid in a way that her red nylon track suit cannot hide. Her hair is pulled back severely into a knot at the back of her head. She is seventeen years old.

She is followed into the conference room by a taller, somewhat reedy young woman with short wispy hair, a delicately pretty face, and an expression of mild dismay.

"My name is Fang," the gymnast says, plonking herself down abruptly in the seat across from Sherlock, "but in English, I prefer to be called Anne."

"Why Anne?" Sherlock asks, briefly, glancing at the interpreter. She stands with her hand on the empty chair, uncertain.

"I like it." She smiles, revealing slightly crooked teeth and adds, "Also, _Fang_ sounds stupid in English."

"Anne, this is Sherlock Holmes," Sally says. "He has come to talk to you about your mother."

"I know," Anne says. "You are in all the newspapers with your friend, Doctor John Watson."

"Am I?"

"I have seen three today already." She nods at her companion, who has seated herself closer to the door than to Sally, and adds, "Lin and I like to improve our English together by reading them."

Lin twists her hands in her lap and ventures earnestly, "Your newspapers are very instructive."

Sally starts the interview. First, they go over the information they gathered last time. Mercifully, the Freak remains silent for this. At times, it would be almost easy to forget that he and the translator are present, and in fact, Sally does forget all about Lin. But Sherlock, although quiet and still, feels like a dark line slashed into the fabric of the room; a window into a roiling landscape she cannot allow herself to see.

Anne's voice is steady as she speaks, but it is clear she is struggling. The strength and discipline her gymnastic training has required are holding her together right now. But Sally knows there will, inevitably, be a breakdown. There always is. Hard work is never enough. Plans fall through. People leave or die or fail you somehow.

"You've told me your mother was in good health," Sally prompts after the timeline has been established once again, and Anne and Lin's discovery of the body reviewed.

"Oh yes." Anne nods. "But she worked hard for us all. And for me. She had many worries."

"Concerns about your performance?" Sherlock asks. He's looking at Anne's wrist. She is wearing a bracelet of thick, irregular yellow stones.

"Yes. It is, we think...We thought this year was the last opportunity for us. For me. Because I am growing, and already, I am having difficulties." She glances, fleetingly, downwards.

"How is your ankle?" Sally asks. They've discussed it before.

Anne places her left foot on the desk without hesitation. "It is much better." Her motion displays an intricate pattern woven in strips of violently pink tape above her white trainers.

"It's very _bright,"_ Lin remarks from her corner.

"I am not ashamed of my weakness," Anne asserts, quite firmly. "Julia says that most people want the kind that looks like skin, but I prefer this colour. It is meant to remind my muscle how to work correctly. I think it is more effective this way."

"Julia," Sherlock repeats. "Who is she?"

"Oh, she is one of the...physical therapists? Here. She has been very helpful to me."

"What will you do after the Games?" Sherlock asks, abruptly.

"I will return home to China, of course. I have no family, so...I must make a plan quickly." Anne lifts her chin, and adds, "I must do my very best today so I have more options for the future. It is what my mother wanted."

Sally sees Lin's faint smile of approval at this. She thinks, _a watchdog, but a loyal one. She likes Anne._

"What sort of options?"

Why would the Freak ask that? It has nothing to do with anything.

The girl's eyes steal towards Lin, and flick away. "I like to learn languages. Perhaps I will teach them, or become a translator."

"Your English _is_ very good," Sally agrees.

"Yes," Anne states, simply. Her certainty, her conviction in her own abilities, is a palpable force.

"How's your Russian?" Sherlock suddenly asks.

"You know this from my bracelet?" Anne asks, eyes narrowed, following his.

"Baltic amber. You don't wear other jewelry, but you are fond of this." He indicates the bracelet with a tilt of his head. "Could be a gift, but you associate it with the future."

This smile is slow-dawning, but delighted when it arrives. "I thought perhaps...I did read about your abilities."

Sherlock nods. "It's all true. That bit, anyway." And although Sally has to admit that his confidence is quite as justified as Anne's, it makes her feel something other than admiration.

"I _do_ like Russian things," Anne says. "My bracelet. The people. The writers."

"Tolstoy?" Sherlock asks.

"Sometimes. He spends too much time on names and old dynasties. It's boring." Anne studies him. "You, I think, would prefer Dostoevsky."

"Crime and Punishment?" And Sally stares, because the Freak looks, _sounds_ amused.

"Of course."

"I read it five times the year I was sixteen," he agrees. "Do you speak, or only read?"

"Mostly, I read. I know I say things badly."

"I might be worse," Sherlock suggests. He shuts his eyes for a moment, inhales audibly, and says "что это такое что она переводчика не может слышать?"*

Anne blinks, touches one of the beads on her wrist, and says "моя мама хотела чтобы я жил в Англии."

Sherlock nods. "I wondered whether I had got it right."

"You did." She smiles at Sally, who is completely mystified, and says, "We are talking about reason and the devil."

Sherlock snorts. "One is rare, and the other nonexistent." But he smiles at Anne on one side as he does so.

They wrap up the interview, then, because Anne has a gymnastic programme to complete later that day. Sally wishes her luck, and adds, "I know your mother would be very proud of you for keeping on. It must be lonely."

Anne touches Sally's arm then, with a finger. "Please, don't worry, Sergeant Donovan. I cannot be truly lonely. I am never alone." Which is true, because she has Lin. Lin, who cannot be a suspect for the same reason. She is never alone.

The two Chinese women leave, and Sally takes a swig of her coffee and says, "So. What was that? I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Russian book club meeting. Not much good to us, was it?"

"More useful than I had hoped, actually," the Freak says, thoughtfully, rubbing at his collar as if it itches. "She told me something rather interesting."

"What?"

"_My mother wanted me to live in England." _Sherlock smiles, the way he always does when he's about to make the Yard—_make Sally_—look stupid. _"_You were right. She _is_ clever."

* * *

John has been fobbed off on Detective Constable Jones. It's fine, really, but rather than giving all of his attention to Werner Achen's roommate, he's worrying about Sherlock and Sally Donovan.

It's probably for the best that he's looking at awkwardly-rendered pencil sketches of winged men, lions with human faces, and demons with sabres (drawn by Achen on the back of a printed schedule), because honestly? He's been simmering in a rage cloud ever since Donovan appeared at their door. She'd been so damned _ready_ to believe that Sherlock was a criminal, after all. And while John had successfully suppressed (and then ultimately addressed) his issues with Lestrade, he hadn't seen Sally since the day, over a year ago, that everything had started going to hell.

"Seems to me, he wasn't quite right in the head," Jones says, cutting into John's angry reverie.

"No argument here." John pushes the drawings away with a shudder. "And no one has managed to locate his wife?"

"Her neighbours all think she's on holiday," DC Jones offers, 'But she didn't say where she was going."

"I can see why." John sighs.

Karl the roommate, who has finished his events and would really like to be done with all of this so he can go cross epees (so to speak) with a fit blonde member of the US fencing team, appears to agree with that assessment. "Beate thought he was crazy. She wanted a divorce."

* * *

On the next stop in their itinerary, Doctor Ajit Patel shows them Achen's prescription for a common beta-blocker. They're heavily regulated in Olympic athletes, but as the victim was neither a sharpshooter nor an archer, the committee allowed him to continue his course of treatment.

Over the next hour, John realises he is acquiring quite an extensive education in the alternate uses of a variety of popular medications. Pharmacology was not his area of speciality; trauma was. Now he can see that it's a fascinating field with a massive potential for misuse. He can't decide whether he's sorry Sherlock is missing this, or glad he isn't along for the ride.

As if John could ever protect him from any sort of knowledge pertaining to chemistry.

* * *

He's headed towards a seat by the window, struggling with a tray of curry and his bandaged hand, when a woman's voice says, "Doctor Watson, I presume?"

It's a small, lithe brunette with a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. She has also got a newspaper, and she's rather pointedly comparing his face to the one in the photograph.

He sighs. Well, it was bound to start eventually. The headline, at least, is positive, if a bit cumbersome: _Holmes Suicide Faked For Investigation's Sake._ He suppresses his own morbid curiosity. How much of the truth has Mycroft allowed to bleed out?

"Guilty," he says. "I'm sorry, can I put this down?" He nods to the table, indicating that she is in his way.

"Oh! Sorry. I was too busy being star-struck to see your hand." She backs away, and in an awkward flurry, pulls out a chair for him as he sets the tray down. "You must be tired of awful people like me wanting to chat you up."

Her eyes are hopeful and her smile chagrined, so he says, "No, no. It's fine. Actually, you're the first to try." He immediately amends this. "Since the news, I mean."

She laughs. "Does that mean I can keep going, then? Only, I am so terribly curious."

John scans the crowd, spots Jones still in the fruit smoothie line, and says, "Oh, why not." He notices her identity badge, and says, "I see you're an official part of this madness."

"The Olympics?" She seats herself across from him, and unwraps her sandwich. "Well. Not in a very glamorous way. I'm a physio."

"What, attending the athletes?"

"Yes. It's mostly taping people up, a bit of massage... I haven't got much going on right now. Many of the athletes have their own people..."

"So I'd imagine. Have there been any interesting injuries?"

She settles into her chair. "More like ongoing things. Repetitive stress, you know?"

He nods, and eats a forkful of curry. It's decent. Well. It should be, really. He studies the woman: Julia Wills, according to her badge. She has a pleasant, slightly horsey face, and appears to be in her mid thirties. She's got a gaudy track jacket on, like virtually everyone else in the place. Hers is purple.

"So, why are you here, then, Doctor Watson?"

"John is fine."

"John, then."

He nods towards her paper, folded on the table. "What, doesn't that say?"

"No."

"Ah." He chews another mouthful of curry and says, "Well. You know the athletes that died..."

"Oh! You mean the ones that overdosed on something? I thought those were considered accidental deaths."

"Oh, I'm sure they were. But how did they get hold of the stuff in the first place?"

"So you're investigating! That's intriguing." She clasps her hands together and leans forward. "You know, I actually worked on some of them..."

"Really." John perks up, pleased to have stumbled upon a potential source of useful information.

"Oh yes! I didn't do much, mind you. Werner Achen had a bad knee. I taped it for him."

"What was he like?"

She clicks her tongue. "He didn't talk much. I got the impression he was a bit...depressive. Seemed more worked up over his knee than he should have been, you know? He'd had the problem for years, and it was always fine with taping. Just a patellar tracking thing." She frowns for a moment, and adds, "And he was very...strange about his wife. Mentioned her constantly. I found it a bit odd. I mean, I wasn't trying to...You know."

"Why do you think he would have...well, turned to a performance enhancer?"

She laughs, and then immediately covers her mouth in horror. "Sorry! I shouldn't. It's just that he really wasn't doing very well. And he knew it. He felt very pressured, of course. They all do."

John nods. "Obviously." His right hand is itching under its dressing, so he places it on his bottle of water, hoping the cold surface will offer some relief.

Julia nods at his hand. "What happened to you?"

"Stupid, really. I put my hand on some broken glass. Slashed it up a bit."

"Looks like more than a bit." She gives him a sympathetic look. "I'd read something about a fight."

"Not much of one. A drunk took a swing at Sherlock. I got in the way. It was over before anything really happened." He's sure as hell not going to say, _Sherlock pretended to make a pass at a raging homophobe in order to blow our cover because we were tired of pretending he was dead, and it worked a little too well, so I had to tackle him before a bottle connected with his head and ruined his fancy brain. Naturally I fucked up my hand on the dismount._

She snorts. "Says the man who helped take down the Wellington Arch Bomber. I'm sure it was slightly more complicated."

"I—what?!" John knocks his water bottle over in his haste as he reaches for her paper. _Mycroft, you bastard, _he thinks. "Sorry, but can I have a look at this?" Luckily, the water is still capped, so it didn't spill.

"By all means." He can hear her finishing her cheese sandwich as he races through the article.

It's about as factual as a description of the Tooth Fairy meeting Father Christmas for drinks on the moon. Apparently, he and Sherlock spent the last year working diligently to bring first Moriarty, and then Sebastian Moran to justice. Undercover, of course. Well. That _was_ slightly true, but they made it sound as if things had been more..._sanctioned _and _organised _than they had been; as if John hadn't just stumbled upon the truth at the last possible moment, and Sherlock hadn't spent weeks sliding down a cocaine tunnel and stalking the most dangerous man in London without a coherent plan. They also conveniently left out how the Arch explosion had been triggered in the first place—Sherlock, naively waltzing into Moriarty's virtual minefield—or the fact that John had later shot the bomber on his own—or that he'd recognised but failed to report him earlier—with a weapon he shouldn't have had access to. There was a blithe (far _too _blithe, in John's opinion) summary of Moriarty's masquerade as Richard Brook, the evidence against him that the police suddenly, _conveniently_ managed to scrape together, and the madman's ultimate suicide. All chronologically rearranged to make more sense, of course. The truth is harder to believe or even describe without additional questions and blame.

To make matters worse, they've also managed to make it sound as if Sherlock and John were practically star-crossed lovers, reunited at last in a moment of epic peril. A very long moment that had _actually_ consisted of John accidentally stumbling upon a murder-in-progress (where the victim just happened to be the man who'd wrecked his life by committing suicide a year earlier), John taking a shot that still sometimes makes him wake up at night because it could have gone horribly wrong, and John spending weeks putting Sherlock through DIY rehab. _Fan-fucking-tastic, and no thanks to you, Mycroft._

"Oh dear." Julia says, wincing at John's expression. "I suppose it's awfully strange to read about yourself."

"That doesn't begin to cover it," John says. "Not even close."

"Is it true?" she asks, curiosity clearly warring with empathy. Her eyes are large and hazel.

"Sort of." John rubs his good hand over his forehead and says, "If you're going to sit here, can we talk about something else?"

"Sorry." She folds her sandwich wrapper into shiny metal fourths and says, "So, ah...I had to give Jack Cutter a chiropractic adjustment once..."

* * *

It's half eleven by the time they return to the hotel, which is steadfastly horrible, but almost a relief after the abrasively modern bustle of the Olympic Village.

John makes an effort to stay awake long enough to compare his notes with Sherlock's, but after his fourth face-splitting yawn, Sherlock tells him to go to bed. He doesn't argue.

As he waits in the black for John's breathing to slow, Sherlock feels a giddy sort of anticipation. It's like...It's like knowing he's about to smoke a cigarette, but without the accompanying minuscule throat spasm that reminds him that he hates it nearly as much as he enjoys it. This is a different sort of want, a feeling of emptiness that can be _(will be)_ filled by something soon. Air against his tongue, yearning capillaries in his lips, which fall open as if to accept a paper cylinder or speak or breathe or—It is, but it isn't.

He shuts his eyes and lets his body become heavy and dark and unimportant, sinking into the mattress, into blankness until he forgets to breathe.

Lassitude is not the point.

_Stand, then._ _Stand with your face against a window—_fall, actually. _Slide..._

He exhales sharply. He's doing it wrong. How did he—?

_Burning smell. Cold damp sliding hands on—_

He flexes his shoulder blades deep into his coat, which makes the rough wool rub against his neck like a blanket or an unexpected hand.

No.

He considers taking his coat off. It's a distraction. He wasn't wearing it then. Wasn't himself at all.

He presses his collar back into place and his hand stops over his collarbone, on the faint knob that didn't used to be there, the knob that he finds himself touching compulsively now because it's still surprising, as it shouldn't be. He rubs it hard, dismissively, and brings his hands back to his sides, but they feel strange there, so he folds them over his chest, like a dead knight waiting on a tomb. He breathes.

The problem is that he doesn't know where to begin. This process of interpolation works in starts, but then it fails him—it falls off abruptly into nothing. He needs to control it. But how can he fill the lacunae—how can he get to the bits before or afterwards—if he doesn't know how large the blank spaces are? If he cannot account for the time he's lost, everything that follows becomes suspect. He has to retrieve the data.

What he _should_ do, what he really ought to do, _right now_, is solve the case. But it's not—It's not the highest priority, and if he can't care—he _will_ solve it. The pieces are there. They're waiting. He'd thought today that—

Later.

He puts his hand out, blindly, towards the table between their beds. It has a glass of water on it. Not his. Curved, alas, but also helpfully beaded with moisture. Still cold. _Glass._

This is frustrating in the same way that doing maths for other people is. This is the sort of thing that makes him lose the thread, fall out of the sky, plummet down rabbit holes. He's got to bring his speed down to make this work, and that's when the faults in the road become obvious, the cracks where the data gets lost.

He returns his hands to his side, concentrates on spreading his fingers flat against the rough polyester fabric of the bedspread.

_Glass._ He must have had one in his hand. A glass, and some cards: slick/rough paper. But the _glass_ was the important thing.

Oh, but it's no good, because first he must have got there. Sent a message. Opened the door. Sat down at the table. _Why is that gone?_ Why can't he see Moran's table, a table that even _John_ could describe better than he can, in fact?

He knows what the steps look like, and the door. _Verdigrised knob set in the centre, scarred green paint—_It's no good. Again!

_Breathe._

Back to the glass, then. He touches it, condensation cold against his fingers, _which would have been a bit abuzz, really. They were. And it's not. Ah, taste not smell_. Whisky and water, because Rohypnol doesn't taste of anything special. _Water from the tap, and weak whisky, _which he doesn't particularly like, because it's—

_oak like the table it's sweating on, and it burns and it's—_

Definitely _not_ that.

_his fingers like a distant sort of burn and he hasn't got his gloves on so he feels it like a low-concentration acid or a splash of paint or a short-term scar for the rest of the day._

Stop.

_The glass._

And he knocks it over.

* * *

**9: A Course of Treatment**

John awakens with a start, not completely sure he has heard the sound of glass breaking outside of a dream. But no, Sherlock is muttering something, words he can't quite hear, so he fumbles for the light switch, heart pounding.

"Sorry. Your water glass. I knocked it over." Sherlock is groping for something on the floor between their beds, his other hand shielding his eyes against the sudden light.

"Jesus. Well, if it's broken, don't—"

"I'm not going to cut myself," he says, carefully picking up the shards and stacking them on the table. There aren't many.

"Good." John sighs and rubs his face. His mouth tastes terrible. "I think the other glass is by the sink, if you want it."

"No." Sherlock folds himself cross-legged onto his bed, which is still made. He has his coat on. "I was just trying to remember something."

John makes a questioning noise, because really, that shouldn't have resulted in a broken glass, but who knows. "Is it something I can help with?"

"Not really." Sherlock grinds his teeth together, audibly. "I, ah. It's not the case."

"Oh." He looks...not good, somehow. Drawn. "Is it something...Is it something bad?"

"It's something _missing._ I can't—I shouldn't be. It's just..."

John waits.

"I can't have this blank space." He presses his lips together in an unhappy line, folding himself deeper into his coat.

"Okay...?" John pulls his second pillow—which had managed to sneak under his arm while he was sleeping—behind him, and settles back against the headboard. He's quite awake now. "When you say a blank space..."

Sherlock exhales, bumpily. "I can't remember some...no, quite a lot of things. About that day."

_That day. _John wrinkles his forehead. "Sorry. I just woke up, so. Help me out?"

"That day you found me." He turns to look at John, pupils contracting against the light. "I'd thought it would be—I thought I'd have remembered them by now."

"Mm." John tilts his head back, but does not break eye contact. "You know enough about the human brain to know that sometimes these things just...They just stay lost."

"But it started to come back." Sherlock wraps his right hand around his throat, pressing his fingers into the skin under his collar. "The other day, I remembered something. Only fragments."

"Oh." John blinks. "What was it?"

"In the pub. I put my face against the mirror, and it felt the same. It was the window."

"The window?"

"The one you shot him through," he says. "But before that."

"That's a bit...Okay. I see why that would be disturbing," John says, because he does remember, and it was.

"It's not enough. I don't remember enough." He pulls his hand away and draws his lapels together, holds them closed. "I still don't know what I did. How I got there."

"Is it important?"

"How do I know?" he snaps. "That's the point, isn't it? You've got no idea what it's like, just—just having a hole where a segment of time is supposed to be."

"I might, actually," John says, mildly. "Only I imagine it's worse, really, when it's you."

Sherlock swallows.

"I don't mean that in a— it's not meant to be patronising." John smoothes the horrible bedspread over his thigh. "It happens with concussion. Or with certain drugs." He shuts his eyes for a moment, and says, "I woke up once in the middle of the desert, and I didn't know how I got there. I was only out for a minute, I think. My head hurt, but I thought I was okay, so I got up."

"What had happened?"

"Stupid, really. We hit a bump. The driver wasn't...I don't know why it happened, really. I hit my head on the gun mount. We were packed in close together. So. I got up, and my head was bleeding...Here's the scar, actually." He turns his head and runs his fingers through his hair to find it, a faint line. "Stopped it bleeding, and again, I thought it was all right. But then I couldn't remember the rest of that day. The part that came before, I mean. So that's...It took me a long time to be okay with that."

"Oh." Sherlock wraps his hands around his knees. "But you are, now."

"I had to be, didn't I?" John chews at a rough spot on his lip, lets it go. "Have you ever lost time before?"

Sherlock's face is very still. Maybe John shouldn't have asked, but he waits. He lets the silence stretch out and watches him through it. "Yes," he says at last. "It. It wasn't like this."

"Ah." John pushes down the questions.

"I have," Sherlock says, pushing his fingers together so the joints hyperextend, "a feeling that this is important. That I've missed something I need to know."

"You told me that it bothered you that you didn't see him die."

Sherlock exhales, sharply. "This is not about _closure_. I did want—I mean, it did, it does matter, but there's something else. If I remember how it began, if I can just fill in that bit, the rest of it should just..."

"Come back?" John nods. "I can—I mean I have already, to some extent, but maybe not enough—I can tell you what I remember."

"When you found me."

"Yes, if it helps."

"I'm not sure that it would." Sherlock looks away, towards the door. "I don't know that I want to."

John frowns, because he's not sure. "It's not really something to be ashamed of. Not knowing."

"Isn't it?" Sherlock laughs, but not as if it's funny. "Fine, then. What did I say?"

"When? You mean when we came in? I don't know that you even knew who I was, at that point."

"And that disturbed you."

"The whole thing disturbed me, Sherlock. I've told you, I thought you were dead. Thought I might have shot you. So, yes, on the whole, us not having a coherent conversation? Not really the worst thing."

"Not a good thing, though." He studies John's face. "I know you told me he was dead. I couldn't see you. I did, though. Know it was you."

"I was trying to stop you bleeding at the time. You weren't very cooperative." He laughs. "Not that you ever are, really."

"No." He sighs. "And then, I don't know. More missing pieces. I think I dreamed."

"You crashed again. We carried you out, and I think you missed all of that." John pushes his head into the pillow. "You're really fucking heavy when you're being dragged up the stairs."

"Dead weight."

"You were. Mrs. Hudson was afraid we were going to drop you. We weren't. Jeff and Alan are quite strong."

"So are you."

"I've had some experience," John says. "Not with stairs, as such, but there are worse things."

"There always are," Sherlock says, but now it sounds as if he's talking about something else.

"Is that...is that of any use to you?" John asks, carefully.

"I don't know."

"I'll be here. So...you can ask me things. If you decide it's important."

"Right."

John looks at his hand, says, "I think I'm going to change this dressing, or I won't be able to get back to sleep."

"Do you need help?"

John gets up and rummages through one of his bags. "You can help me with the tape," he says. He comes to stand between the beds, and hands Sherlock the roll of tape. "Just two pieces, I think." He winces, carefully peeling the dressing away. "Oh. And the tube. The cap's a bit difficult with one hand."

Sherlock unscrews the cap and hands it back to him. John applies a dab of ointment to his palm, and rips the sterile gauze packet open with his teeth.

"Not very hygienic," Sherlock remarks, watching him apply it.

"Noted. If it goes septic, I'll be sure to bring a malpractice suit against myself."

Sherlock measures out two lengths of tape, and holds them out. John takes them and smoothes them down. "Thanks."

He gathers his supplies, and glances back at Sherlock, who is fiddling with a scrap of tape. "Oh," he says. _"Oh."_

"Oh, what?" John asks, getting back into his bed.

"Tape. It's the tape."

"Is this a case thing, now?" John asks.

"Very much so." Sherlock stretches himself out flat, and says, "I need to think about this."

John turns out the light.

* * *

The next morning, Sherlock says, "I need you to do something for me." He's still on the bed, still in his coat. John is cleaning his teeth and hunting for his phone at the same time, so he simply nods.

"For the case," Sherlock clarifies. "We need to split up for a bit, but I'll need you to show up and be a distraction."

John find his phone under the bed, and rushes to the sink, just in time to miss coughing foam all over the carpet. He spits. "I'm good at that."

"I'll text you where to be."

"All right. Do I get anything else?"

"Not yet," Sherlock says. "Sorry. It works better if you don't."

"Okay. Why? Is it dangerous?"

"Probably not."

John looks at him. "Probably not," he repeats. "Not dangerous, like the other night?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Not like that. I'm only breaking into something."

John puts his hand on his hip. "Oh. Really?"

"Yes, really. But it has to be done just so. I'll need you to come by at a certain time. That's all."

"Right. So what am I doing before that?" he asks.

"I don't know. Have breakfast. It will take a little while."

"You should eat something, too."

"Not hungry," he says.

John sighs, because they're back to _this_ again. "Fine." He sits on the edge of the bed and starts putting his shoes on. 'We've got half an hour," he says. "The shower is working today," he adds, pointedly.

"Good." Sherlock heaves himself off the bed and shrugs out of his coat. John is pleased to note that while he may not have slept, he had at least, removed his shoes and socks at some point. He shoulders his way into the bathroom, and then pokes his head back out. "Oh, and I need a phone number."

"Okay?"

"Julia Wills," Sherlock clarifies, and shuts the door.

* * *

John finds a croissant in the dining hall, and watches Sherlock leaving, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. Sally Donovan pulls up a chair beside him, and unwraps a sausage roll. "So," she says.

John looks at her. "So, what?"

"You're still with him," she says, and takes a bite, almost savagely.

"Brilliant observation."

"How sweet. You sound like him, too." She snorts. "Is it worth it, being his dogsbody?"

"Wouldn't be here if it wasn't," he says, folding his arms. "What I still don't see, Sally, is why you care."

She narrows her eyes. "I just wonder, even now, how well you know him."

"You have _no idea_ what I know," John says, coldly. "One of the things I certainly do know, and that you should _respect,_ is that after everything that happened, he has chosen to come back to this. Because he thinks it matters."

She says nothing, but her mouth twists.

"I know you don't like him, but he doesn't hold you responsible. I'm not sure I don't, frankly."

She swallows. "I didn't—"

"Let me finish," John says, looking her in the eye. "I know you didn't have all the information when it...When things happened. Okay, I do know that. But the two of you have pretty well hated each other for as long as I've known you, and I cannot help but think that made you blind to the possibility that you were wrong. He needed someone to believe him, and in the end, that was only me. After years. _Years of work _for you people_."_

"But the evidence was—"

"The evidence was a _lie,_" John says. "And if any of you had stopped to consider the facts, really _truly_ consider everything, you would have seen that immediately."

"Greg did," she says, softly.

"Yes, he did. It wasn't any good when you were calling for Sherlock's head, was it? You made him doubt. Just long enough."

"There was the witness," she says. "The girl. We still don't know why she reacted that way. You need to understand—"

"What I _understand_ is that because you don't like him, because you think there's something _wrong_ with him, you decided he was a criminal. A murderer. And he wasn't. He's not."

Her eyes are very wide, so John keeps going.

"I think you don't like him because, and stop me if I'm wrong—or don't. No. Don't. I think you don't like him because you need things to be done a certain way. You want things to be tidy and accountable. And he doesn't work that way. I think you're like the student with a brilliant classmate whom you accuse of cheating because you don't know how he arrived at the answer so quickly. You're clever, Sally, but you're inflexible. For you, there's only one way to do things, and if someone doesn't adhere to that system, god help him."

"There's a reason why we do things a certain way. We have to."

"I know you believe you do."

"No, we have to. Do you have any idea what it's like when someone has committed a crime, and you _know_ that they're the one, and you can't convict them because you can't prove anything? And maybe they'll do it again, or something worse. While you have to sit there. And if you make a mistake, any tiny procedural mistake, when you _do_ have the information, you have to let them go."

John nods.

"It's...that there are rules for a reason. Because if we just—we can't just throw procedure aside. All those little things he doesn't care about. If we don't take care of them, we stop bothering with _all_ the things that matter. Everything goes to hell. And that's the problem. He doesn't _care _about anyone else."

"But he does care," John says. "Because I _do_ know him, and he does. He cares greatly. But it's different." He pauses. "It's like. It's like if you're questioning a witness. Someone who's crying. You still have to ask the questions. Someone has to."

"Yes."

"Well, I think...I think sometimes that _everything's_ like that, for him. On a grand scale. He can't...can't let himself care about the rules or the people. So he just...does what he does. Because _someone has to do it._ He can't care about the things _we_ care about, because if he does, he can't solve anything."

"That sounds...mad."

"It does. Not sure I've got it quite right, either. Still, that's what I believe. And if I didn't...well, I wouldn't be here."

"I know you have to tell yourself—" she begins. He cuts her off.

"I don't _have_ to tell myself anything. He told _me,_ really. Not in words. He thought he had to die, Sally. He thought he had to die because three people, three people he cared about, _deeply, _would die if he did not. I was one of them." He blinks, because his eyes are stinging, but he keeps going. "He's good at solving problems, but he's not very good at consequences. Moriarty fucking ate him alive because he knew that about him. _He_ was good at strategy. Sherlock can't make it through a simple _board game_ because he can't be arsed to understand the rules. And it doesn't matter, most of the time, because people like you and me, we make sure the other things are taken care of."

"And he treats us like we're the fucking help."

"I know he's an absolute bastard sometimes. He really can be; I'm not excusing that." He sighs. "I suppose my point is, he's not...he's not a fucking _sociopath_, Sally. He's oblivious, and often he's a dick. But he doesn't work the way he does because he's arrogant. He works the way he does because he has to. Most of the time, doing things properly, doing them your way, works just fine. When it doesn't, though, I don't think you've got much choice. That's when you need him, because no one else can do what he does. But you use him, Sally. You all do. You use him, and if he acts like he's doing you a favour, maybe it's because he is. He doesn't care about money or glory or even his own good name. All that matters to him is that he gets it right."

She folds her hands together. "It would be easier if he didn't constantly rub our noses in it."

"And what do you do? You call him a freak. You resent him for the very thing that makes him so useful."

"So, what then? You're his friend because you admire him and no one else does?"

"I'm his _friend_ because I like him. Yes, I do admire him, and sometimes he drives me insane, but he's a _proper_ friend. It goes both ways. He takes me exactly as I am, and he doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't." He rubs the back of his neck. "And maybe we're neither of us very good, at times, but...it works."

"I've wondered," she says. "Why you are. I thought...I thought all sorts of things. Maybe they were wrong."

"Maybe so," he agrees. "You don't have to like him. But I think you'll have to learn to work with him. You attending to your details, and he to his."

She sighs. "For what it's worth, I wasn't happy. When he died."

"Of course not. You felt guilty, and then you were angry. We've both been angry for a long time," John says. "Being angry gets you through things, the worst things, but in the end, you've got to stop." His phone buzzes, and he takes it out of his pocket. "You and I, we'll both keep doing our jobs. And maybe we'll find a way to forgive each other."

_As quick as you can. Room 23B. You've been looking for me. Any pretext will do. —SH_

John gets to his feet, and picks up the remains of his pastry. "I have to go now," he says. He does not look back.

* * *

Sherlock pauses in the hallway. This is going to take some finesse, portraying a precise compound of himself and the Real Man people seem so eager to believe in. John's description had been helpful, but clearly the newspaper had proved a distraction. Only one way to find out, really.

He knocks on the door, not at all sharply. A muted thing.

Julia Wills _(should have checked that, check it later)_ is small, dark and carries herself well. She smiles and says, "I know who _you_ are. Come in."

Sherlock sweeps _(slightly less sweeping than usual, dampen the curve)_ into her spacious office, which is, as expected, furnished with a high, padded table, foam rollers, and a variety of cupboards and clinical—yet—not—quite medical furnishings. She seats herself behind her desk, which is really more of a table, and gestures to a chair opposite.

"Hello," he says. "I was wondering if you could assist me with something."

She smiles again; she smiles a great deal. Nervous? No. Practised. Warm. "Goodness," she says. "Is it serious?"

"Only to me." He leans forward, just a bit. Confiding. "It's not to do with my case, actually, although I understand that you've worked with the men who died. It's more of a professional matter. A bit of advice, really."

She tilts her head. "Oh?" And because he notices these things, yes, there it is. A slight glance to the left.

"I was talking to John this morning, and something he said made me think you might not mind. Obviously, if it's not an appropriate request, you must let me know."

"A potentially inappropriate request? I _am_ intrigued." She laughs. "Clearly he must have told you I have far too much time on my hands."

He smiles back at her, getting the eye crinkle just so. "He did rather imply that. And he's been going on at me about getting an old injury resolved. I'm afraid I've been a very bad patient."

"I see a lot of those," she says. "Believe me. So. What've you got?"

He's got the tone, now. The rest should follow easily. "Well. I am a bit tempted to make you guess. I think it's rather obvious, anyway."

She laughs again. "A challenge. All right. Can you take your coat off, for me? There's a hook on the back of the door."

He does so, and stands again before her table. She peers at him for a moment, and says, "Raise your arms."

He does so, feeling the familiar tightness in the left one, although he makes the motion smooth. No need to simply hand it to her. Clearly, she enjoys the game.

"You've done something to your shoulder. Rotator cuff, or no. Collar bone?"

"You _are_ good," he says. And _oh,_ he's taken that bit from Irene, apparently. "I haven't read the papers, but I imagine that wasn't mentioned."

"Physiotherapists have their own mystical powers of deduction." She raises an eyebrow. "Otherwise, you move well for a dead man."

"I spent far too long on a sofa," he says, ruefully, "but I've been getting out more, recently."

"Murder—is it murder?—will do that." She picks up a biro, and spins it between her fingers. Strong fingers, naturally. "So. What happened?"

"I broke it when I jumped," he says. _Feel that. That's real. Verisimilitude._ He lets it go, with a small exhalation. "And I did a very bad job rehabilitating it afterwards."

"Ah." She offers a sympathetic smile. "That's a tricky one, isn't it? Because you're not meant to use your arm at all while it heals. You'd have had soft tissue damage, as well as the fracture, of course."

"Yes. I've got a bit of a...Well, it's a knob, really. Where it mended."

"Hmm." She puts the biro down, clasps her hands together. "Well, I'd hate to be forward, but would you mind showing me?"

He blinks. A touch of the startled fawn, but not too much.

"I mean, take your shirt off," she clarifies. "Believe me, I've seen it all. Unless you've got a secret tattoo habit, in which case I _shall_ be calling the papers."

"Ah. No, no I haven't." He fleetingly considers his inner arm, but no. It's been—it should be fine. He unbuttons his shirt, much as he would under ordinary circumstances. Well. Perhaps a bit more self-consciously. Which he isn't, really. Carefully, he drapes it over his chair. Habit: it isn't one of his favourites.

She looks at him, pleasantly clinical. "Well," she says. "Clearly you missed the rest and immobilisation period. The good news is, it's not too late to restore some range of motion." She frowns. "Two other things. You've been rubbing it raw. That's quite some irritation you've got there."

He glances down, which is difficult, because his neck is rather tight on that side. "Oh," he says. It is, as it happens, quite raw. "So it is. I've—I must have been scratching it a bit. It itches."

"Hydrocortisone," she suggests. "Not too much; it can makes the skin fragile over time."

He nods. "And the second thing?"

"Can you turn a bit to the left? So I can see your back?"

He swivels his torso. "Like this?"

"Yes." She studies him for a moment. "You're right handed. So what is it that you do that has over—developed your left side?" He turns back. "Not that it's very obvious." She waits.

"I play the violin," he says. "Not recently, but for many years."

"Aha!" Her eyes are alight with a triumph he knows only too well. Deduction, and she's surprisingly good at it. Occupational, of course, but he notes, again, that he's got to tread carefully.

"My posture could be a bit better," he concedes.

"You're not alone in that," she says. "So. I've only got about ten minutes before an incredibly dull meeting—"

_I know._

"—but I have just enough time to show you some exercises that can help you get back up to speed. Is that all right?"

"That would be fantastic," he says. Gratefully.

"Right then. These will all be things you can do on your own when you're at home. No special equipment required."

He allows her to demonstrate a series of movements, with the table, with the wall. He follows her lead as requested, and is chagrined to discover that he is weaker than he'd thought. Which is not acceptable, really. So the other thing he'll take away from this— beyond his original purpose—is surprisingly utile.

She's clearly not going to leave him alone in her office, as she gathers a notebook and pencil, so he takes a little longer than necessary struggling with his buttons. He hardly needs to feign this, because he has palmed a collar stay while her back was turned. The benefit of a lower quality shirt is, of course, that the stays are plastic and fairly flexible.

He has already sent his pre-prepared text message to John.

Just as expected, there's a knock on the door. "Goodness, I'm not _that_ late," Julia says, and pulls it open.

John frowns at Sherlock, who is doing up his cuff—really this couldn't have been better timed—and says, _"There_ you are! I've come to take you to lunch."

"Sorry," Julia says, hovering by the door. "I've been helping him with that shoulder. He was a lamb, but I've got to go now—"

"It's only sheep's clothing," John says, and taps his foot, meaningfully.

"I've just got to get my coat," Sherlock says, and carefully places himself so that she'll have to leave first. He unhooks it, slings it over his arm (obscuring the latch and knob rather neatly as he does so), and steps out, pulling it closed behind him. There's a click.

"Thank you," he says. "You were very helpful."

Julia smiles. "You'll have to let me know how it works out." She bustles away down the hall, leaving Sherlock and John behind her.

"Give it a moment," Sherlock says.

John looks at him. "Do I want to know?"

"I took your advice," Sherlock says, shrugging his coat back on, while scanning the corridor. It is empty. "I hope you didn't really want to have lunch just now."

"Hardly. You said any pretext. It's a bit early, but...seemed appropriate." He shuffles his feet on the carpet. "So. What are we doing?"

"I need you to stand outside this door. Check your messages or something. Make it look plausible. I won't be long."

"Outside the door?"

"Yes." Sherlock grins at him, wolfily. "I've made certain it didn't lock."

* * *

**10: Closing Ceremony**

* * *

A woman in a tasteful yellow dress smoothes her brilliantly red hair behind her ears as she awaits her contact in the back of a luxuriously appointed car.

She's an old hand at diplomacy, the art of _quid pro quo._ It's who you know and how you ask and what you give in return. She's given her trust to two men. One she loved until it was no longer politic, and another she's forgotten how to love and cannot speak to. Two men, both capable of great and terrible things. One asks almost too much, and the other asks nothing at all.

* * *

He runs over the details with the armed men in black suits; their roles just as crucial as his own.

Blood calls to blood, and for this he dares to risk his body, his safety, his self. As he goes over his plans, the apparatus, the chemicals, the limits of his own highly trained body, he cannot help but hope that something beautiful comes of what he does. He's been so dull for so very long, but this will feel like falling when it comes, flames and fear and faith: so soon.

And if it does go wrong, for him at least, it's better than rotting away in a Dublin that doesn't care.

* * *

John stands in front of the door, and he ought to be more concerned than he is. He scans his messages, as suggested, and he's really quite good at doing two things at once. Eyes busy, ears vigilant; that's the army medic's way. If it's not someone else's neck, it's your own.

Cheerful thoughts, but then, he's fairly sure Sherlock's rummaging through cupboards in there because he thinks Julia Wills is a murderer.

Strange, actually, that in all the time they were talking the other day, she never seemed particularly interested in Sherlock, for all that she knew who he was. Then again, despite being distracted by the paper, John had managed to pick up a hint of artificiality about her. She'd been flirtatious, and perhaps there could have been a time when he'd have leapt at that like anything, but...something wasn't quite right there. It's only natural to see that in retrospect, now that she's a suspect. Or maybe he's just a little too emotionally drained to care when reasonably good-looking women want to chat him up.

Anyway. Harry has been sending him texts that he'd somehow managed to miss yesterday. Well, not _managed;_ he'd been deliberately ignoring his phone.

**8:53 AM: He's still alive? For fuck's sake, call me.**

**9:25 AM: You're all over the papers. Hiding out? I would. Call me, though.**

**10:13 AM: Mind that Watson temper. You're too old to get into fights. Love you anyway. Seriously. Call.**

Bloody hell. It's going to be like this forever, isn't it? He's laboriously typing _I'm fine, yes he is, I'll call you soon. I'm at the Olympics. No, really I am _when the door swings open again. He hits "send."

Sherlock looks pleased, but also grim. "Two unopened hypodermics and an unmarked bottle. Get Donovan," he says.

"You think—"

"What else would it be? Call her. Here, use my phone." Sherlock thrusts it at him, the number already selected. He's busy doing something to the door latch.

"Sally? Are you sure?" He's about to hit the call button, but he has to ask.

"She's here, isn't she? I've left everything _in situ._ She ought to be pleased." Sherlock glances down the hallway, which is miraculously empty.

"Aside from the break-in," John points out, because that's not quite to procedural standards.

"I wasn't going to wait. We've got her, now. That's what matters."

It's ringing, so John declines to comment.

As they're waiting for Sally to arrive, Sherlock, who has repossessed his phone, is busy looking something up with flying fingers.

John stands himself against the door. Julia Wills is unlikely to have any weaponry, but he'd really rather not find out the hard way.

"Stupid!" Sherlock groans, tucking his phone away.

"What?" John asks, lightly distracted by a herd of extremely _leggy_ athletes of some sort—maybe from one of the African countries?—striding towards them down the hall. He nods, they flash him smiles, and they keep going.

"She was married, of course. Her original name was Julia Swain."

John looks at him, blankly. "And I should know who that is, because...?"

Sherlock flips him a corner of a smile. "Mm. She was a gymnast before she got her physiotherapist's license."

"Ah, okay."

"An Olympic gymnast, in fact," he continues. "Barcelona, 1992. Expected to do well, lost her nerve in the floor event. Whatever that is."

"I think that's the one where they tumble and do handsprings or something. No equipment," John says.

"Ah." He shrugs. "Anyway. The tape residue being visible in the postmortem photographs was a piece of luck. Could have been a coincidence, but it wasn't. As for opportunity? She had loads. How she got to the men was easy. Clear the moment I walked in there, really."

"Oh?"

Sherlock snorts. "Tell me, John, did you find her charming? Was she girlfriend material?"

"Who, Julia?"

"Obviously." He waits.

John feels insulted. "Honestly? I mean, yes, she talked to me. I suppose she _was_...charming, if you like. But she was overdoing it a bit, in my opinion." Then it dawns, and he snorts. "Oh god. Tell me she didn't."

Sherlock smirks. "What are you insinuating?"

"No, really. She flirted with you, didn't she." John's laughing now, because—because that's insane. "And you were doing up your shirt sleeves..."

"She made me take it off," Sherlock concedes. "But the exercises will no doubt prove to be completely benign."

"Better show me," John says, and then finds the image of Sherlock doing PT around the flat funnier than it ought to be. "You can keep your shirt on," he manages, but barely.

"Having a laugh?" Sally asks, because she's arrived with DC Jones in tow, and there they are, sniggering like schoolboys.

"We've got a murderer," Sherlock says. "If you'd care to examine the evidence...?"

* * *

Julia Wills isn't smiling when they meet her outside the conference room. And when Sally Donovan starts telling her, "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence..." she gets a bit physical. It's a good thing that Jones is there, because she's really quite strong.

Particularly because Sherlock feels the need to tell her, conversationally, "The Chinese have just taken gold. Liu Fang's floor routine was quite impressive."

Her reaction, to him, is more than enough verification. The chemical tests will be a mere (if necessary) formality after that.

And they take her away.

It's strangely anticlimactic, this. Odd to be standing there, together, in a sunny hallway that still smells strongly of carpet adhesive. The murderer's gone, the case is solved, and no one's particularly damaged by the experience—aside from the victims, that is. No ticking clock, no hot pursuit...

Sherlock looks at John, and he thinks, _You're disappointed. _Which is interesting, and also, perhaps, a good sign.

"Come on then," he says. "Dinner, and I'll tell you the rest."

* * *

"So you're saying the first two were _practice runs?_"

"Precisely." Sherlock says, using his wooden chopsticks as a scoop. It's not a very elegant process; there's more sauce than rice on his plate. "Her ultimate goal was to get to Anne."

"Through her mother? Why would she have taken it, though? I mean, you said yourself that her injection was clearly self-administered." John frowns.

"The key was, as you say, that it was _through_ her. The paranoia of the Chinese Olympic authorities made it quite impossible for Julia Wills to have unchaperoned access to Anne. Lin would have accompanied her to every therapy session. Her mother, on the other hand, would have been free to see her alone, and did. Apparently she'd been having some difficulties with her back." He takes a long swallow of tea, and continues. "Where Julia went wrong, however, was in her misunderstanding of Liu Jie's relationship with her daughter. She wanted Anne to succeed because she felt her options would be limited if she remained in China. An ordinary defection would have been impossible, but an athletic success might give her enough status to negotiate a certain degree of freedom in future. Julia saw her dedication in the wrong light. The very devotion that made Liu Jie susceptible to taking a risk in the first place also made her unwilling to risk administering an unknown substance to her daughter without testing it herself, first."

"That seems...vaguely commendable, but also completely mad. Why risk it at all?"

"We may never know precisely what was said or done to persuade her." Sherlock says. "But we know that this was Anne's last year in competition. As for the rest...well, desperation leads to strange choices. Athletes and the people around them lead very focussed lives. They set sanity at a different standard."

"Clearly," John says, thinking of Werner Achen and Jack Cutter. "So, I'd imagine the other two were fairly easy. Jack Cutter had neglected his training, and had too many sponsorship commitments to fail."

"Yes. And the evidence suggests he was neither risk-averse nor terribly concerned about the rules. Not once his father died."

"And Werner Achen was desperate enough to do anything," John suggests. "His relationship was in ruins, he was trained to compete with the wrong hand...which I still don't understand; not really. Oh, and his medication could have made things worse: depression, fatigue, and possible sexual side effects. Not exactly helpful to an athlete, or a man who's having marital difficulties. I suppose he presented the perfect opportunity."

"Yes," Sherlock agrees. "I'm sure the process was fairly straightforward. She'd begin by making conversation about the issue of performance enhancement in sport. They'd have disapproved, on general principle, but then they'd be thinking about the possibilities. Later, she'd make the point that legislating pharmaceuticals can be seemingly arbitrary—an argument that both men would be susceptible to: Achen, because his beta blocker was approved for _his_ sport, but outlawed in others; Cutter, because of his history of recreational cannabis use. Having established that the moral landscape was negotiable, curiosity would set in. After that, it's a rather brief journey to experimentation."

"And the deaths were close enough together that Achen wouldn't have known what he was getting into." John pokes at his remaining dumpling, which is growing cold. "But you really think it would have been that easy? To get them to risk their lives?"

"I do, yes. She would have made it sound plausible. You and I both know that many substances are toxic at levels just above the therapeutic dosage. She might have shown them any sort of corroborative data, and then administered a larger dosage." He pauses, and adds, "I don't have to imagine what it's like to know that a simple chemical compound could mean the difference between competence and excellence."

John thinks about the things he could say—_until it doesn't; until it becomes the most important thing; until it _kills _you_—and decides to leave it. "So, Anne, then. What was the point of that?"

Sherlock shrugs. "Judging from Julia's reaction when I told her of Anne's success, I imagine her motivation was a sordid cocktail of jealousy and long-standing shame. The men were not only easy targets; they were expendable because she despised them. Her emotional instability was also her undoing, because she made mistakes. She was enough of a planner to secure the drug —and it's possible she tested it at lower levels long before she had access to the Olympic Village—but she didn't take into account the fact that Liu Jie would test the drug on _herself_ rather than administering it to her daughter. By then, the timetable was completely ruined. She couldn't risk another attempt before Anne's final event, and people were starting to talk too much. She took the precaution of approaching you in a social context, because of your affiliation with me. That attempt at damage control was a further mistake. She'd have done better to stay out of sight. Finally, she should have disposed of the evidence, but she didn't."

* * *

"Into the lion's den," Mycroft remarks, as they make their way towards the Olympic Stadium in his long black sedan. "The media will be present, of course, but I think you'll find they are otherwise occupied."

"Does that mean we can go home after this?" John asks, because although they've been moved out of the horrible hotel and into a nicer one, he'd really appreciate a night in his own bed, in his own flat. _Their_ own flat.

"You may," Mycroft says. "Oh, and I took the liberty of sending Mrs. Hudson on holiday while you were away. Should you become concerned."

"That's...kind of you," John says, because it was a decent thought.

Sherlock is busy looking out the window as his city rushes past, hand hooked in the collar of his shirt.

"She's a bit too old to be holding off the media on her own," the elder Holmes agrees.

"You underestimate her abilities," Sherlock contributes, briefly glancing their way. "Typically."

"Be that as it may." Mycroft clears his throat, and returns his attention to John. "I've been wanting to talk to you about something."

"Okay," John says, easily.

"The Royal Free Hospital position."

"Ah. Sorry. Yes. I haven't..." John glances at Sherlock, who is still resolutely faced away, but he fancies he sees a tension in the lines of his neck that was not present previously. "I failed to contact them.

"Quite." Mycroft sighs, but not very heavily. "I'm afraid that particular position is no longer available."

"That's, ah...understandable. So that _was_ you, then. I thought as much."

"I advised him to accept it anyway," Sherlock says, without moving.

"It was me," Mycroft agrees. "But you should know that I never would have submitted your name had I thought you were in any way unsuited to the work."

Sherlock looks at his brother, then. "Which I _also_ told him."

John frowns. "We're talking about my life. Specifically, _mine."_

"It should be," Mycroft agrees, dryly. "Is it, though?"

"Says the man who wants to _direct_ it now. Thanks for that—" John begins, but is cut off by Sherlock.

"If this is what you want, do it. Other opportunities can be found." He looks meaningfully at his brother. "Can't they."

Mycroft says nothing, but folds his hands over his umbrella handle. It isn't raining, which is no doubt a relief to the Olympic Committee.

"The thing is," John says, looking at Sherlock, which should be the easier option, but now that he's started, it isn't somehow. "I'm not entirely sure that it _is_ what I want." He glances at his hands, spread on his knees, bandages peeling, right palm itching. "Filling in at the clinic was something to do. And working in trauma, well, it's very nearly what I did before. I was good at it. Damned good, actually. But." He clears his throat. "While I want to be of use—all right, _need_ to be of use—I'm not sure this is the answer. I'm not the man I used to be."

"If you're worried about your ability, or your _dexterity,_" Sherlock says, but John cuts him off, rather firmly.

"No. Listen. I've been thinking about this. And god knows I need the money—"

"You don't," Sherlock interjects, but Mycroft raises his hand.

"—but it's not going to work, is it? Because if I'm going to keep..." he waves, vaguely, at Sherlock, at the car around them. "If I'm going to keep doing whatever _this_ is, I can't take on that sort of work. It wouldn't be fair. To them. To my patients. To you. To _me,_ actually. So. I'll...I'll have to work something out. And I will. But when I do, it will be on my terms."

"Which brings us to another point entirely," Mycroft says. "You were reasonably successful at running a consultancy before this—"He clears his throat. "Before the events of this past year. But if you wish to continue on in this vein," he adds, looking pointedly at Sherlock, "You will need to renegotiate, by which I mean, actually, _properly_ negotiate, your arrangement with New Scotland Yard."

"Oh?" Sherlock says. His mouth is set in a line.

"Yes. They've been rather adamant about that. If you continue to work with them, you will need a proper contract, and your conduct will be held to a certain standard. This need not prevent you from working for members of the public, or indeed, for me. But it will protect you and the police from the sort of difficulties you encountered previously."

"Moriarty's dead," Sherlock says, quietly.

"So he is. But the damage has been done. The public will require a _bona fide_ gesture of sorts. Which leads me to yet another point. You will need to attend a set number of press events before you are able to continue."

John cannot restrain a faint groan at this.

"Both of you, preferably. I trust this will not present a problem?" It's clear that it had better not.

"Fine," Sherlock says. "Obviously not a choice."

"Unfortunately not." Mycroft looks at John. "I have already laid the way, to some extent. A brief will be provided."

"Of course it will. Anything to prevent embarrassment."

"Anything to ensure _your_ _safety,"_ Mycroft corrects his brother. "I made an error before. It will not happen again."

And Sherlock has the good grace not to contradict him.

After a long tense silence, during which John imagines a great deal of silent negotiation is taking place, Mycroft says "I apologise for failing to mention it before, but I have been assured that your work with the Yard will be paid to a set schedule." His eyes flick over to John. "You, as well. Should you wish to be included."

"I...As what?"

"Also as a consultant. Again, should you wish."

John grits his teeth. "Really. Because I'd hate to think this was just another fancy way to institutionalise a role as some sort of glorified minder for your brother. I am his _friend."_

"And colleague," Sherlock puts in.

"Yes. And that," he agrees. He remembers the term had annoyed him once before. It doesn't now.

"To the best of my knowledge, you have saved his life on at least two occasions."

"More than twice," Sherlock says, but does not elaborate.

"And you also know that he would do—has done—the same for me." _Just not in the same way._

"I am aware. Regardless. Your own _specific_ contributions have not gone unrecognised. I hesitate to repeat DI Lestrade's specific phrasing, but it seems that you are valued and respected. There is a place for you in this scheme, should you desire it."

"What can I—what do you _want_ me to say?" But he doesn't look at Mycroft. He looks at Sherlock, and his face is terribly, carefully blank. John sighs. "Right. Okay, yes, then."

And Sherlock nods, once, briefly, eyes on John. After a moment, he remarks, "The price of petrol being what it is, I have to wonder how many more times we're going to make this loop."

"Once more should be sufficient," Mycroft says. "One final request, for now."

"Only one?" John snorts.

"During the ceremony, there will be a minor diversion. I'd appreciate it if you don't interfere."

"Oh?" Sherlock says. "Mixing business with popular entertainment, brother dear? I should have suspected as much."

"I've made an arrangement with an old school friend of the Prime Minister. She has something I need, and in return, we'll be overlooking a brief...irregularity involving a North Korean athlete."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

"Don't be ridiculous," Mycroft says, cryptically. "I can tell you this, though: it won't be boring."

* * *

Rank hath its privileges. Their seats are good ones.

Sherlock is clearly bored by the musical entertainments, although his running commentary (delivered largely to John, because Mycroft is steadfastly ignoring them) is an amusement in its own right. John laughs, loudly and often.

It occurs to him that Mrs. Hudson is probably watching this, wherever she is, and that makes him feel warm, and yes, a touch sentimental. It's unreal, frankly, to be sitting here with Sherlock, very much alive, and his brother, very much an enigma, but also a tired, somewhat relieved-looking man in a good suit which is probably too woollen for the weather. Something strange is going to happen—it's bound to—but that's a good thing. It's all right.

He feels that he's going to sleep perfectly well tonight, for once. The music is pounding so loudly he can feel it in his chest, and the light show is making his head spin, but he _will._

Last night, Sherlock had gone down to the hotel bar and ordered a whisky after they'd finished their paperwork over the case, and then further alarmed John by standing in the bathroom with the lights out and the door open for a very long hour, only to emerge and say, "It's no good." And consequently, John had spent far too long staring at the ceiling in the dark, wondering whether he dared inquire, knowing he'd said enough already the last time. Because there are some things a man has to do for himself, and maybe it was enough simply to be there. Just in case.

In the morning, John felt another brief stab of panic when he saw blood slowly blooming through the fabric at the neck of Sherlock's white shirt as he poured himself a coffee. He was halfway across the room before he realised that (a) it wasn't _much_ blood and (b) the damage was wholly self-inflicted. And then they had a slightly uncomfortable chat—fine, a _lecture_, delivered by John—about nervous habits and antibiotic cream with lidocaine and letting things heal.

But now he seems all right. Possibly well, even. And John thinks, _I made that choice a long time ago. He said danger, and I said yes. God knows where he'll lead us now, but it won't be dull. Restrictions or no restrictions. Paperwork and procedures and all. We're not dead._

And Sherlock rolls his eyes at the Spice Girls and the dancers and the Union Jack in lights, and Mycroft surprises them both by laughing explosively during the tribute to Freddie Mercury.

The athletes stream past in endless ranks, the Americans and Germans in black arm bands, the Chinese in white. Anne is bearing her country's flag, and Sherlock glances at Mycroft, who nods ever-so-slightly but says nothing.

They're extinguishing the torch when it happens.

He moves in a blur, leaping out of the crowd towards the centre of things. Small and quick, with a suspicious looking bundle strapped to his body, and before anyone can think to stop him, he's up and away, scaling the bronze cauldron as it folds. Everything around him seems to freeze as their eyes rise up, because that _can't be real. _He gets to the top, and he's unfurling _wings_ of some sort, and he's got a metal cylinder in his hands—

—and it's fire raining down with a whistling sound, and something in John desperately cries out, _Get down_, but he stands his ground, he watches the rain become flowers, golden and strange and like nothing he knows—

—with a crack, and Sherlock sees hours in seconds, a death and a life; a darkness, _a year_ dispelled by a voice, by a hand, by the light—_oh, that's what I lost—_

—they stand with their faces turned up towards the sky except his, except hers. A Chinese girl presses a medal into her taller companion's hand with whispered thanks and darts away, threading adeptly through the crowd. A North Korean man steps backwards and is suddenly engulfed by a waiting cluster of government men and one woman with blazing red hair—

—and he smiles as he glides out over the waiting sea of people on stretched silken wings, adrenaline singing through his veins, because at last, he's got it right, and it's so fucking _beautiful _and things can and will only get better from here—

And it's dark.

"So that's that," Mycroft says, because while perhaps the pyrotechnics and the aerial acrobat were not _strictly_ necessary, they did not detract from the tone of the evening. Two defections successfully underway despite last-minute adjustments, a contented public, and no further fatalities. He permits himself to feel pleased.

* * *

Three days later, a parcel arrives at 221B, addressed to Sherlock Holmes. It's a box wrapped in brown paper, from a Kensington address. Inside, wrapped in a duty free bag, there's a smaller box and a perfumed note _(Casmir_ by Chopard) on expensive cream-coloured paper that says, simply "Thank you."

And inside that box, wrapped in tissue, there's a wooden figurine. It's a tiger.


End file.
